Choose a candle - A long candle (1400 days), A fair candle (1000 days), A short candle (700 days) - type a seed if you want a particular land, and press Light the candle in the right-hand column. You start in Whitespire with the leader, Aldwin, 150 gold and a few days of rations. If a campaign was saved, the title screen offers to Continue it instead.
The screen has three columns. The left column is information: the candle, the company (click a companion to select them), gold and rations, the roster book of companions left in towns, and the rite tally. The centre is the map and the journal. The right column holds every control for where you are - inn, market, smith, teachers, tavern and work in a town; travel and camp on the road; the eight directions underground; strike, move, cast, hold and run in battle.
Mouse or touch: click a neighbouring hex to step, or any farther hex or place to travel there by the quickest road - hovering shows the route, an estimate, and a warning if the packs will not cover the journey, and anything that happens on the way (an encounter, arriving somewhere, exhaustion) stops the walk; Stop here halts it. In battle click a lit square to move or a foe to strike. On the world map the mouse wheel or a pinch zooms about the cursor, dragging pans, and the Map band offers Zoom in (+), Zoom out (-) and Centre on company (0). The camera follows the company as it travels and your pan is kept as an offset from it. Keyboard on the road: W E A D Z X for the six directions; underground Q W E A D Z X C; Escape closes a sheet or halts a walk. In a battle the keys are S strike, M move, H hold, R run, F let them fight it out and space to step a foe’s turn. Out of battle the sheets have keys of their own: T the quest, M the map (a key to the ground and every place with its distance), N the chronicle, R the roster book, B the satchel, P the company sheet, ? the help page, and the same key closes them again.
Every hour spent - travelling, resting, working, fighting - burns wax. The masthead shows the day and the days of wax remaining, warming from gold to red as the wax goes and naming the stage - burning down, low, guttering; the candle on the left burns down to match, and at half, a quarter, a tenth and a twentieth the chronicle records how the flame stands. When the wax is gone the flame goes out and the game is lost.
Inn: rest a night (3 gold a head) to heal fully. Market: rations (2 gold each; the company eats one per head per day) and herbs. Smith: the whole company at once - the kit of each companion beside the best affordable piece that would improve them, bought with one press, or pick a companion and choose for yourself. Teachers: a grid of the company against the skills the town teaches, showing each level held and the price of one more; the student stays behind for 7 days a level. Tavern: everyone looking for work, with what each would add to the company set against the company’s best in every skill. Work: a grid of the company against the trades with each daily wage, the best-paying marked; set the length once and press a wage; collect them later from the Those waiting here sheet, wages paid on rejoining. Ask the sage: each sage knows one position in the rite order. The chandler in Whitespire sells Moonwax; the Dunmar forge draws a silver wick from Barrow ore.
The world is a hex map. Each step costs hours by terrain (roads are fastest, mountains slowest) and may bring an encounter; danger rises as the candle burns down. Camp a night heals part of the company's wounds and restores energy; Camp until rested keeps watch night after night until the company is fit, the rations run out, or something finds the camp. Ruins and towns are entered by stepping onto them. Underground the map is square with eight directions and only what your light has reached (three squares) is shown - the rest stays dark until you walk to it, and what you have seen is remembered. Click any known floor square to walk there, and the walk halts when a monster comes into the light or at a chest or the goal. Monsters within a few squares close in.
Battle is fought on a 9 x 7 field. Units act in initiative order; the current unit is highlighted on the field, and the left column lists who acts next with their hits, foes marked apart, and where the round turns over. Point at a foe to see its hits and your chance to hit. Each turn a companion may Strike a foe in reach (click it), close with a foe out of reach (click it and the companion moves toward it), Move to a lit square, Cast a known spell, use a Herb on a neighbour (out of battle the satchel shows the whole company and offers each herb only where it would help), Hold, or the whole company may Run (stealth helps). Let them fight it out resolves the battle automatically. Foe turns are stepped with a button so you can watch them. A fallen companion recovers when the company rests; if everyone falls, carters carry you to the nearest town and fifteen days and half the purse are gone.
Companions left in towns are listed in the roster book with what they are doing, the days still to run, the wages owed so far and how far that town is from where you stand. Where you are standing in the town, Rejoin takes them back and pays; where you are not, Travel there sets off.
The chronicle collects the turning points of the campaign - who joined, what a sage said, each verse and component taken, each ruin first entered, the rite spoken - with a record of days, wax left, battles, wages and hexes walked. It is reachable wherever you are, and from the end screen, which also names the seed so the same land can be walked again.
The quest (under the rite tally, and in the control column) lists every verse, component and sage with its status, where it lies, and how long the road there takes from where you stand; Travel there sets off at once, leaving town if need be. It also shows the rite order as far as the sages have told it.
Hold all four verses, the Moonwax, the silver wick and the First Ember. Reach the Candle Hall at the far end of Halvethar and defeat the shades that hold it. Speak the rite by choosing the four verses in order. The right order renews the candle and wins the game. A wrong order burns the company (never fatally to the quest) and may be tried again - there are only twenty-four orders, each sage consulted fixes one position, and the rite sheet sets out those that still fit while striking any you have already spoken.
The game is lost when the candle burns out. Hunger and wounds cost hours and gold but never end the campaign on their own.
The game saves itself after every action into browser storage (tronsoft_the_magic_candle_save). The title screen offers to continue the saved campaign. Menu returns to the title screen; lighting a new candle replaces the saved campaign. The sound toggle is kept in tronsoft_the_magic_candle_prefs.