Running games

The courier speeds up the further you get. Swipe left or right, or press the arrow keys or A and D, to change lane, swipe up (W, Space or the up arrow) to jump low crates and sawhorses, and swipe down (S or the down arrow) to slide under hanging banners; swiping down in the air drops you straight into a slide. Carts, barrel stacks and runaway handcarts fill a whole lane, so you change lanes around them, and the coin trail through a packed stretch always marks a way that gets through.

The multiplier on distance, coins and near misses goes up by one at 250, 600 and 1,000 metres and at every milestone after that, so a long run pays far more than a short one. Pick-ups give a magnet, a shield that absorbs one crash (it lasts 25 seconds if nothing hits you), double coins or a short dash straight through everything, and the dash only turns up after 600 metres. One crash ends the run, and reaching 1,000 metres in a single run opens hard mode, which speeds the whole course up by 15 percent.

You drag left or right, or use A and D or the arrow keys, to steer the crowd through the gates on the road, and the whole crowd takes the gate its centre passes. Press Split, or Space, and the crowd parts into two halves, one on each side of the road, so each half goes through its own gate; Join brings them back together, and a crowd of one cannot split. A bigger crowd is wider, so obstacles, water and throwers catch more of it, and each plank over water carries only the number on its sign: runners beyond that are pushed in at half the overflow, so a big crowd splits onto both planks.

At the end of the road the crowd meets its rival. A bigger crowd wins and loses as many runners as the rival had, a fort falls when one of its two doors breaks, and the straw giant falls only to a crowd bigger than its strength. The runners who are left climb the banner stairs, five steps worth up to five times the coins, and the coins buy upgrades between stages. There are 50 stages in five worlds, Meadow Road, Harbour Boardwalk, Quarry Hills, Snow Pass and Lantern Night, and clearing Meadow Road opens hard mode, with rivals one fifth bigger.

The run speed is fixed and the course is the song. Eight courses sit on eight songs, from a desert house track at 112 BPM to a 144 BPM summit run, and each brings a new piece of road: spikes, blocks and pits, then pads and jump rings, gravity gates, a glider that climbs while you hold, four running speeds, mini gates and cogs, a dart that zigzags through caves, and pistons that rise on the beat. Tap anywhere, or press Space, W or the up arrow, to jump, and hold to jump again on every landing. Blocks are safe to land on from above, but their sides are not. A jump on the beat rings out in full and one off the beat sounds muted, and a clear is scored by how many of the course's jumps you played on the beat.

That timing is also your safety net. Eight jumps on the beat bank a Backspin, and you can hold two: the next crash spins the song back to the last checkpoint and you play on instead of starting the course again, or you spend one yourself with the Backspin button (B or the down arrow) to go back for a chime you missed. Each course hides three chimes, taken by an extra hop or a detour through a cave. A crash with nothing banked restarts the course, and practice mode returns you to the last checkpoint after every crash. Hard mode opens once you clear the first course: the band plays 15 percent faster and there are no Backspins.

The daily run is the same for every player that day. Saltway Runner's is one generated road, so distances compare directly. Hirsel Crowd Runner's daily road ranks your coins against the day's players, and Tantara Rhythm Runner's is a daily course remixed from all eight courses, with a score shared between players.

Hirsel Crowd Runner and Tantara Rhythm Runner are the two with Play with a friend. In Hirsel two crowds run the same road side by side and clash where the roads meet, best of three heats, with raid gates that take runners from your rival. In Tantara you and a friend run the same remix course at the same moment, a short one or a long one, and each sees the other as a ghost piece; a crash sends you back to the last checkpoint rather than out, and the first to the end wins. If a player drops, the computer takes the seat in both games. Saltway Runner is played alone.