Crowd Current.

How to play Crowd Current

1. Press Tap to run. On a keyboard, focus the start button and press Space or Enter.
2. Drag sideways with one finger, move the mouse across the game or hold A / D or the arrow keys. Forward running is automatic.
3. Pass through one half of each gate. Blue adds, green multiplies, red subtracts or divides. Watch sliding gates and swapping numbers as you approach.
4. Steer the whole crowd into a gap. Rollers, saws and swinging arms knock out whoever they touch, pillars push people aside, and plank bridges have no rail.
5. Check the icon on a red crowd’s number: an arrow charges, split arrows flank, a shield braces. Fights are one for one, so bring more people than they have.
6. On a Warden level, keep your crowd out of the red ring under each slam while your runners wear the giant down.
7. Reach the finish, climb the bonus steps and spend coins on upgrades. P pauses, M changes sound, and the pause panel holds help, sound, detail and restart.

Make your move

About Crowd Current

Crowd Current is a math runner on a stone bridge over a river canyon. You start with a small crew and the road keeps offering choices: pairs of gates, rival crowds, saws, rollers, swinging arms, narrow plank bridges and coins left in awkward places. Steer with a sideways drag, the mouse or the keyboard. An addition brings a fixed number of new people, a multiplication works on everyone you already have, and red gates subtract or divide. The best half of a gate at the start of a level can be the worse half later, because a multiplier grows with your crowd.

The number above your crowd is a real headcount. Each runner is simulated on its own, keeps a little space from its neighbours and follows the crowd with some lag, so a big group swings wide when you change lanes. Push it against a rail and it squeezes into a long column, which is how a crowd of several hundred gets past a row of rollers. People step aside from obstacles they can see coming, but in a packed crowd their neighbours hem them in. Only the people a hazard touches are knocked out. On a plank bridge there is no rail, so anyone pushed past the edge falls into the river, and on windy days the gauge at the top shows which way the next gust will push.

Rival crowds do not stand still. A crowd that thinks it can win charges straight at you. A flanking crowd splits into two wings and closes from both sides. A crowd that is badly outnumbered braces and holds its ground, and a guard posted beside a gate holds only that lane, so you can slip past it by taking the other half of the gate. When the two crowds meet they fight at a real front line, one for one, until one side has nobody left.

Every third level ends at the Warden, an armoured giant standing between you and the finish. Your crowd attacks in a steady stream from the front, and every runner that reaches the giant takes one point off its strength. Between blows the Warden raises its fists over the densest part of your crowd and a red ring appears on the deck. Steer out of the ring before the slam lands. The Warden staggers as its strength breaks and swings faster near the end.

Reach the checkered line and the survivors become a human tower that climbs a staircase of bonus steps. Your reward is a thirty-coin base times that bonus and your income upgrade, plus any coins your runners picked up on the road. Road coins are kept even when a run fails. Coins buy more starting runners or a bigger income, and completing levels unlocks original caps and visors. The canyon moves through morning, golden hour, dusk and night as you progress, and the light shifts during each run.

A little help for your next high score

• Compare a multiplier with the crowd you actually have. Times three on forty is better than plus sixty; times three on twenty is not.
• Look one beat ahead. If a red crowd waits right after a gate, take the half that leaves you with more people than it has.
• A big crowd needs room. Steer it against the rail early so it has time to stretch into a column before the hazard arrives.
• A guard beside a gate only holds its lane. If the better half is guarded, work out whether the fight is worth the extra people.
• Against the Warden, move as soon as the red ring appears. The slam lands about a second later and the ring shows exactly where.

Good questions