World's Hardest Game (Proxy)

World's Hardest Game earned its title honestly. Independent developer Stephen Critoph built it in 2008 as a stripped-down maze of moving obstacles, and it spread across web portals for years afterward, spawning a small genre of "impossible" browser games that never quite matched the original's tight design.

You steer a small red square through a fixed maze of blue circles patrolling exact, repeating paths. Touch one and you're sent straight back to the start of the level — no lives, no penalty beyond lost time. Along the way you have to pick up every yellow coin before the green exit will actually let you finish, which means a clean run comes from memorizing the whole layout, not just reacting to what's in front of you.

Controls

• Arrow keys: move the square up, down, left, and right. Holding two at once moves it diagonally, which is often the only way through the tighter gaps.

Tips

• Treat each attempt as a rehearsal — the circles move on fixed loops, so dying at the same spot twice in a row means your timing is off, not the game.
• Plan your coin order before you move. Grabbing them out of sequence often forces you back through obstacles you already cleared.
• When a level has an early safe zone partway through, actually stop there to read the next pattern instead of running straight through it.
• Step away for a minute after a long death streak. Fatigue costs more attempts here than the puzzle itself does.

It's built for short, focused sessions rather than long play — pull it up for ten minutes at a time, since the real challenge lives in a few seconds of precision, repeated until it clicks.