Police Escape Strategy Guide: Outrun the Cops in 30 Levels

Each turn, the thief moves one cell along the player-drawn path, then every police moves one cell along its shortest path toward the thief's new position. If a police lands on the thief's cell — or if they trade cells in the same turn — the thief is caught and you lose. The thief's path must be a continuous chain of orthogonally adjacent cells from start to exit, with no cell repeated. Walls block movement. The path must end on an exit cell. If the level has keys, the path must visit every required key cell before reaching the exit.

Each police computes the BFS shortest path to the thief's current cell on every turn, treating walls and unmelted ice as blocked. The police steps one square along that path. If the thief is unreachable (walled off), the police falls back to walking its patrol loop — stepping toward the next patrol point. Because the AI is deterministic and greedy, you can predict exactly where each police will be on any future turn. This predictability is the key to clean escapes: plan a path whose cells the police will never reach in time.

The single most important rule: the shorter your path, the safer you are. Every extra turn gives the police another step to close in. When you draw a path, look first for the most direct route to the exit, then only detour if that route crosses a police's path. When a detour is unavoidable, prefer routes that take you AWAY from the police's BFS approach, not parallel to it. A police chasing you along a corridor will catch up exactly when the corridor ends — break away before that happens.

Keys (introduced level 6) must all be collected before the exit will accept you. Plan a route that passes through every key cell efficiently — usually a route that grazes each key on the way to the exit. Teleport portals (level 11) come in pairs. Stepping onto one end immediately relocates you to the other end. Portals are optional — only use them when they shorten your route. The path validator treats the teleport as a single step landing on the paired cell. Ice blocks (level 16) occupy cells and cannot be entered until they melt. Each ice cell has a melt threshold measured in thief-steps taken; once you have made that many moves, the ice becomes passable. Staggered melt schedules create timing puzzles where you must wait or take a longer route. Toggle exits (level 21) open and close on a parity schedule. The exit cell shows green when open, red when closed. Time your arrival for an open tick — arriving on a closed tick means no escape, even with the right path.