I started my journey at dawn, the Sun shining on my back. The first step of my journey was the easiest one. Finishing on that happy thought I went back inside and went back to bed.
I can't do puzzles.

I have no idea what I'm doing

I mean, I had an idea, but I was apparently quite wrong.

Bumping with hint.

Free bump. I have no clue what to do.

OH snap a puzzle! How fun =D

I appear to have gone down the wrong path. I am a bit confused now.

what the shit

Bump for new hint. I acknowledge that some of the words and phrases used are confusing. First two characters should be easier, last three might require a bit of trial and error.

Is the puzzle to find a 5-character Steamgifts giveaway code, or an 8-character ItsTooHard quiz code?

Edit: You clearly say "giveaway code is hidden among character maze". I apparently can't read, haha doh.

Bumping with last major hint. Lets see if anyone tries to solve this.

Ah, spent 3h and still nothing >.< and I don't even know whether I am on a right track or not

Bangs head against wall

I'll point out the giveaway code later on today if no one solves this. For the remainder of the puzzle, you are now free to collaborate together on this.

Im just gonna say, this puzzle is hurting my head!

Among the 160 characters, 5 of them is the giveaway code right? Then are the other 155 characters completely useless?

Could you reveal the answer format (upper, lower, number) as an extra hint?

My brain hurts. >.<

I'm guessing the code is not 5 consecutive letters.
Guessing the first line is the indication of where to start, but can't decode it. Or I did it wrong. Probably did it wrong.

Giveaway code has been marked so the giveaway is now open for anyone who reads this thread. I'll post walktrough later on. Thanks for participating.

Walktrough

Puzzle had three major parts:

First and hardest part was to realize you are looking for giveaway code among character maze. Two of the lines gave slight hints when they were decoded using BASE64 (choice I regarded many to use as default). Second line gave you hint in form "wrong8path???" and seventh line resulted in Hollywood phone number "555-55655665jy". To make this easier, first two hints focused on this part telling you that no outside source is required and all the information is within the puzzle itself and simply stating what was required.

Second part is two realize connection between maze and certain terms. Eight lines match eight days meaning line represents a day. I assumed that people would read lines in regular top-left to bottom-right order as it was written in English meaning one would start from first line's first character. Notice that character maze is not a map, even though such an assumption has its points. As travel is described in one dimension (not two), there are no directions as west or east. I could have written the hole maze as single line string but that would have made other parts harder. Text describes quite clearly that travel starts at dawn making the left side dawn and right side dusk.

Third part was to find the actual giveaway code character by character. Text draws connection between a story of a journey and your personal experience of finding the giveaway i.e. puzzle solving process. Puzzle itself was the journey and to reach the correct destination (giveaway) one had to travel exact path (giveaway code) to reach it.

Dissection

I started my journey at dawn, the Sun shining on my back.

Informs you that travel starts at dawn making the left side dawn side.

The first step of my journey was the easiest one.

As the journey was to reach giveaway by solving the puzzle, your first step in either was truly the easiest one. The very first character is the first key.

After traveling the whole day, I finally greeted oncoming dusk and embraced its calm serenity.

Defines right side as dusk and draws your attention to this location. Embrace your second character that is located as last one of the first line.

Ensuing travel days flew with breeze as I made haste doubling my steps since the beginning while dawn followed dusk and vice versa.

Three characters left but only single sentence for them all? This does not give you exact location like with the previous two. It defines a simple algorithm for finding them that has two parts:

• Distance between locations is doubled what was previously traveled. As at this point one has traveled for one day, unit between characters from now on is two days/lines.
• Characters switch in order of dawn-dusk-dawn-dusk-dawn et cetra as dawn follows dusk and dusk follows dawn.

As we are on first line, we travel two lines and end up in third line's last character. This is however dusk and we are looking for dawn (as second character was dusk). Thus our third character is the next dawn which is found on fourth line. We repeat this by traveling two days and reach end of fifth line. It is dusk, which is fine as previous one was dawn, so we have found fourth character. Last character works on same principle as the third (two days forward but move to dawn as previous one was dusk).

During my eight day journey, I made notes of those resting places in case someone else would wish to walk on the same path that I chose.

Eight lines for eight days.

May your travel be as pleasant as mine.

Hopefully without a severe headache at least.