Runner.

How to play Runner

1. Pick Endless, Deliveries, Daily or Breeze on the start card. Your first run teaches each move: time slows near the first barricade, low barrier, roll barrier and pit until you make the move.
2. Change tracks with Left and Right, A and D, a sideways swipe or the Left and Right buttons. Swipes register as soon as your finger has moved far enough, and one touch can chain several swipes.
3. Jump with Up, W, an upward swipe or Jump. Press it just before you land and the jump fires on touchdown. Roll with Down, S, a downward swipe or Roll; pressing it in the air slams you down into a roll.
4. Run up ramps onto the train roofs and hop between roofs side by side. Watch the signals over the tracks: red means a train is coming down that track.
5. Ride a Glide Board with Space or B, a quick double tap, or the Board button. It lasts 20 seconds, longer with upgrades, and absorbs the next crash. You start with three; rank-ups, Mystery Parcels and the Workshop give more.
6. Collect coins and power-ups. Barrier hops, rolls, pit leaps, roof runs, vaults and close calls score stunt points that chain into combos. Your score is metres times your multiplier plus those stunts. Finish missions three at a time to rank up, and pause at any time with P or the pause button.

Make your move

About Runner

Runner is a three-track rail runner set on an original railway line. Kit, a courier in an orange hooded jacket with headphones and a satchel, takes a shortcut along the tracks and a squat orange maintenance robot called the Yard Sweeper gives chase. The run starts at dawn in a misty freight yard full of stacked containers, reaches a busy downtown line with station platforms and a chance of rain at noon, crosses a harbor viaduct over the sea at sunset and finishes under neon and lit windows on the night line before dawn comes round again. Each change happens inside a tunnel, and the light, shadows, sky and weather keep moving in between. Everything is built from lightweight original 3D geometry with a synthesized soundtrack whose groove changes with each zone and speeds up with the pace.

Every hazard has one silhouette, so the answer is readable from far away. Orange and white low barriers sit at knee height: jump them. Roll barriers hang a striped board with an open gap underneath and downward chevrons: roll under. Tall red and white signal barricades need a track change. Inspection pits with yellow edges need a jump. Parked trains block their track, but a ramp in front of one lets you run up and along the roofs, hop across to the roof beside it and drop off the end. Oncoming trains are always moving toward you: change tracks early. Brushing the side of anything is a stumble that brings the Yard Sweeper right behind you for four seconds, and a second stumble in that time means it catches you.

The course is assembled from 45 authored patterns in four difficulty tiers, from a single barrier to rush-hour trains, roof chains and leaps from a roof over a row of pits. Our tests run every pattern through the real game rules and prove it can be cleared from any track, at every speed the game uses, with only one input every quarter second, even when you arrive mid-jump. Speed rises through five visible pace steps and stops at a fixed cap after about 3.4 km. Power-ups float between patterns: a Coin Magnet, Spring Kicks that jump onto train roofs and over barricades, a Gust Pack that flies you over everything along a sky trail of coins, 2× Score, which doubles your multiplier while it lasts, and Mystery Parcels holding coins or a board.

There are four ways to play. Endless is the classic run through all four zones. Deliveries are 24 routes, six in each zone, that end at a finish gantry; each is worth three stars for finishing, collecting all three stamps and gathering 60% of the coins, and stars open the later zones. The Daily Route is the same line for everyone on a given day, run on standard gear with one Glide Board, three stamps, a streak and a result you can copy. Breeze is a gentler pace with three hearts, where a crash costs a heart instead of the run. Progress, bests, coins, boards and outfits are saved in this browser only; there is no account or online leaderboard.

A little help for your next high score

• Read the silhouette, not the zone: low means jump, an open gap under a board means roll, tall means move, and a ramp means up.
• Take the ramps. Train roofs carry you above barriers and oncoming trains and score a Roof run stunt when you ride them to the end.
• A red signal over your track means an oncoming train. Move before its headlights fill the screen, then look for the next open track.
• Save a Glide Board for the fast late stretch. One board absorbs one crash, and stumbles are cheaper than crashes: a single bump only brings the Sweeper close.
• Spend your first coins on Coin Magnet and Spring Kicks upgrades. The Daily Route always uses standard gear and one lent board, so upgrades never decide it.

Good questions