Rules/Story
You have been kidnapped and locked in the maze under the bathhouse you work at by 5 aliens: a Mercurian, Venusian, Martian, Jovian, and Saturnian.
- Currently, the aliens are spread through the maze, doing various tasks, with no-one patrolling the maze. They aren't moving or paying much attention to their surroundings.
- You can't pass any of the aliens' tiles without the right elemental.
- When you pass an alien with the right elemental, it is removed from the game and is no longer there.
You know the layout of the maze, and that there are 5 elemental creatures in it the pyrausta, wobbling, creeper, automaton, and gnome.
- These are used as guards, and will follow and defend you once you have their attention.
- Currently, they have been set to guard some of the important storage rooms. None of the elementals move, and they will always be on their start tiles.
- You get each elemental by moving onto its tile.
If your knowledge of alchemy is correct, then each elemental will kill one of the aliens:
- The pyrausta kills the Mercurian.
- The wobbling kills the Martian.
- The creeper kills the Saturnian.
- The automaton kills the Jovian.
- The gnome kills the Venusian.
One complicating factor is the energy gates.
- When going through an energy gate, any elementals that you have are transformed and changed into another elemental. The transformation should go pyrausta > gnome > automaton > wobbling > creeper > pyrausta.
- When you use an energy gate, it becomes a wall and cannot be reused or gone through again.
While you have been bound and gagged, you can still crawl along and attract the attention of the elementals if you're near enough. You can move one tile orthogonally, or left/right/up/down, per move.
Map
Here is a map of the maze. The capital letters are the elementals, the lowercase letters are the aliens (Martian is t), @ is your starting position, % is the gates, = is the exit, and # is the paths that you may walk through.
C ####j#= m v A############ % # ### W t G s####%### # P @
Puzzle
What is the fewest number of moves (going orthogonally from tile to tile) to get out of the maze? The goal is to reach the exit, without going through an alien without the right elemental or going through an energy gate twice.