About the Game
Place candles, light a wick, and create slowly-unfolding chain reactions in this new falling block arcade puzzler. The temple is ever-welcoming to new acolytes.
Place what?
Hot Wax is a game where you place strangely-shaped candles on a board. You should try to place them so that when one is lit, the others will also light off of it. Eventually a flame will come.
Place the flame wisely, but don't rest just yet. You'll have to keep placing blocks for the fire to progress through your candles. It doesn't take much to snuff it out though, so be careful where you drop that wax.
Is this place cursed?
The temple houses an ancient entity. It has no name but it is not entirely unfriendly. If you sacrifice flames, and if you collect floating stars, a boon shall be granted to help you.
Bombs, magic acorns, thermite, and other strange little things can all prove very useful, if used correctly.
Why are we doing this again?
In Ritual mode, you only need reach a certain score goal. Faster is better, but done is better than perfect.
Your first Ritual will unlock other practices. Penance let's you go at your own pace: a growing wall of tangled wax has to be cleared and that task falls to you. But here the fire runs through the wax all at once, before a new wave starts.
Completing rituals and penances will unlock other difficulties, and other modes. Glory, another puzzle for your mind. Eternal a ritual unending. Slow-Burn will let you train at a desired level. And finally, Service shall give you a different challenge every day.
The acolytes like a challenge. For that reason, leaderboards are kept for fast Rituals, high Eternals, and impressive Services.
Do I need to bring my own robe?
Hot Wax can be played with either a keyboard or a controller, with rebindable controls for both.
An average Ritual takes up to 10 minutes to complete, depending on your level. Unlocking and playing the various modes and difficulties should take up a couple of hours.
Besides the 6 different gamemodes, the game features some 35 color palettes to unlock with score, and 22 achievements to complete.
Screenshots
10 imagesVersion Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Hi cultists!
Another day, another patch. We're getting into some more mysterious cases here so I'm not sure everything will be fixed, but I did what I could with the information I had.
Thank you all so much for the support so far! We're at 41 reviews and they're all positive. I'm super glad that you're all enjoying the game this much! Thank you thank you!
Changelog for v1.1d:
Restored powerups for "no stars" Services. (no stars spawn, but you can still get powerups with flames)
Fixed win anim when ratio is not 16:9.
Idle hyperflames can no longer be shroomified.
Grey wax wicks on the lowers line no longer disappear when the grey wax grows while they're on fire.
Tentative fix for a rare crash with hyperflames.
Tentative fix for a mysterious crash.
Tentative fix for pieces insta-locking at very high levels. (lvl 250+)
Have a lovely week!
-Lorraine @ PUNKCAKE Délicieux 🥞
Hello cultists!
At the time of writing this, we have some 194 scores up on the Visitor Ritual leaderboard, and the game reached 20 Steam-customer reviews, and all of them are positive! This warms my heart better than any candle. Thank you all so much for the support!
A few bugs creeped up in the night, so here's another small patch! I'm hopeful that we'll get to the end of these soon.
If you do find a bug, the best place to report it is our Discord server, in the #bugs channel. This makes it a lot easier for me to keep track of them!
Here's the full changelog for v1.1c:
Fixed the goal of today's daily Service being only 10 points this morning.
Changed the goal for daily Services that have a goal, to 30k. (previously 50k)
Trying to rebind something to (B) on a controller no longer fails.
Fixed a bug where bits of pieces in specific configurations could disappear when gravity was processed.
Fixed the clipboard text when sharing a Service time.
Viewing an empty leaderboard now shows the empty Top panel automatically instead of loading endlessly.
Smoke no longer appears in the corner of the screen when placing a hyperflame.
Have a wonderful weekend,
-Lorraine @ PUNKCAKE Délicieux 🥞
Current Release
Build 26382941
Uploaded Nov 03, 2026
How to Install
hotwax.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
D17834F9
594e71c91092ece66252278f1c1dfeefa46a74e00c7ab389b155e1898407e375
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View AllDownload Hot Wax for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Hot Wax for free. Hot Wax is a Indie released by PUNKCAKE Delicieux.