Sprint.

How to play Sprint

1. Choose a mode. Season is the guided route from the club track to the floodlights; Quick race, Stadium Five, the Daily challenge and Practice are always a click away. The call room shows your lane, the field, the wind and the controls for the event.
2. On your marks, stay still. When the starter says Set, wait for the gun, then press either foot. Your reaction time is recorded. Moving before the gun is a false start, and two of them disqualify you.
3. Alternate LEFT and RIGHT. Watch the dot on the cadence rail and press the next foot as it crosses the green band. Perfect and good strides build speed; early or late ones do not. The highlighted pad and the letter in the dot show which foot is next.
4. Hurdles: press the action button inside the orange zone before each barrier. Long jump: press on the white board, hold while the angle gauge climbs and release in the green. Relay: press when your teammate’s ring turns green, before the yellow zone ends.
5. Read your result. The sheet shows your time or mark, place, reaction, top speed, clean-stride percentage, splits, rivals and a photo finish. Personal bests become ghosts, podiums unlock the next Season meet, and stars unlock new kits.
6. Pause with P, Escape or the Pause button, and restart instantly with R. Leaving the tab or moving focus away pauses the race, and resuming from Set sends everyone back to their marks so nobody gains an edge.

Make your move

About Sprint

Sprint is a track and field game built on one idea: a good runner keeps a rhythm. Each press of the left or right foot is a stride. The cadence rail above your athlete shows a dot travelling from your last stride towards a green band, the ideal moment for the next foot. A stride inside the bright centre of the band is perfect and gives the biggest push; a good stride still helps; an early or late one adds little. Pressing the same foot twice costs momentum, and pressing faster than the beat simply wastes effort. A steady, accurate beat reaches top speed, while hammering the keys leaves you far behind. The rhythm is judged on the gap between your own presses, and each press is timed from its input timestamp rather than the frame that processed it, so a slower phone or a touch screen does not change the judgement.

Every race starts properly. The starter calls the field to their marks, raises them to Set and holds them for a random moment before the gun. Your first stride after the gun records your reaction time. Moving on Set, or within a tenth of a second of the gun, is a false start: the first earns a warning and the second disqualifies you, exactly as the field would expect. The 60 metres is decided by that start and the drive phase, low out of the blocks and rising over the first 30 metres. In the 100 metres you reach top speed around halfway, and after about six seconds your legs begin to tire, so speed fades a little and off-beat strides cost more. The 200 metres starts on the bend from staggered lanes: outer lanes start ahead, the curve trims your top speed (more in the tight inside lanes), and only a clean rhythm carries you down the home straight.

The technical events add a single action button. In the 110 metres hurdles an orange zone appears before each of the ten barriers; jump inside it for a clean clearance, or clip the hurdle and lose speed if you go too early or too late. In the long jump you get three attempts: build speed down the runway, press on the white take-off board and hold the button while the angle climbs, then release in the green band around 21 degrees, the angle real jumpers leave the board at, because a steeper take-off costs more speed than it gains in height. Over the board is a foul, taking off early costs the gap you left, and every jump is measured down to the centimetre. In the 4 × 100 metres relay you run every leg from a staggered start: your teammate sets off as you arrive, a ring around them turns green when they are an arm away, and a perfect pass hands over full speed. Each rival team hands over in its own zone too. Miss the changeover zone and the team is disqualified.

Twenty original rivals, from club runners to floodlight stars, each have their own reaction, acceleration, top speed, hurdling skill and jumping mark. They run the same fixed curve every time, with a small seeded variation, and they never speed up because you are ahead or slow down when you fall behind. The Season takes you through sixteen meets across four tiers and four times of day. A podium opens the next meet, and each meet offers three stars for a podium, a win and beating the meet record. Stars unlock new kit colours. Quick race lets you run any event against any field you have reached, Stadium Five scores five events on a points table against four national rivals, and the Daily challenge gives everyone the same event, field and wind for the day.

The stadium is drawn in code. Every athlete is a jointed skeleton dressed in an anatomical body, with quads, hamstrings, calves and shoulders shaded by the venue light: a low morning sun, high afternoon light, golden evening light or two crossing floodlights. Rivals have their own build, hair and kit, and every foot stays planted on the track. The camera starts close on the blocks, widens for the race and closes in again at the line. Flags on the stand roofs and a gauge beside the track show the wind, clouds drift with it, some meets run in the rain, and the crowd rises to its feet when a race is close. Sound is synthesized in the browser, from the starter's gun to spikes on the track and the crowd's roar. Phones get a tall portrait layout with large thumb pads as well as the landscape view, and the renderer lowers its detail on slower devices to keep the motion smooth. Reduced motion holds the camera steady and removes speed lines, rain motion, confetti and camera shake.

A little help for your next high score

• Rhythm beats speed. If the rail says early, leave a slightly longer gap; if it says late, tighten up. A calm, even beat is faster than any amount of mashing.
• React, do not guess. The Set hold changes every race, so anticipating the gun earns a false start. A reaction around two tenths of a second is excellent.
• In the 200 metres and the relay, fatigue makes every stride window matter more in the second half. Save your concentration for the home straight rather than your fingers for the bend.
• For hurdles, keep striding right up to the orange zone and jump in its brighter middle. The zone moves with your speed, so watch it rather than counting strides.
• In the long jump a safe take-off a little before the board beats a foul. Aim for the board, and release the angle between 18 and 24 degrees.
• Pass the baton a touch early rather than late: a crowded handover costs more speed than a long reach, and running out of the zone costs the race.
• Practice mode shows how many milliseconds early or late each stride lands. Ten minutes there will lift every other event.

Good questions