- Pace94 · frantic
- You run without ever stopping, flat out, a jump roughly every second, over a typewriter pulse climbing from 164 to 184 beats per minute, with a cursor that leaves no dead time.
- Difficulty69 · rather merciless
- Miss a chasm or let the cursor catch you, and you start again from the last pilcrow, up to twenty seconds back; there are only two per line. After two falls on the same line the cursor slows a little, without saying so.
- Tone85.9 · unsettling
- On Halloween eve, something is erasing the universe backwards: a bar of light that swallows the letters and lets them fall as ash, capitals that crumble under your feet, and, at the end, a cursor blinking right behind you.
- Story11 · silent
- Almost nothing to read: a title, one line on how to jump and two words when you fall. The letters of the scenery spell no word anyone knows; the run itself tells the erasing.
- Scale87.8 · cosmic
- The letters are the size of mountains and the lines cross the void: other lines pass far off, galaxies are written in tiny letters, and the ending pulls back to show the whole universe, a spiral of text.
- Form65 · in between
- The runner everyone knows, on invented ground (the tops of letters, spaces as chasms) with one more rule per line that no text explains: dots that give back a jump, capitals that collapse, then "¿" marks that flip gravity.
- Look95 · lush
- A void packed to bursting: illuminated gold letters as big as cliffs, lines of text scrolling at several depths, galaxies written in letters, ink nebulae, a golden trail behind the dot, and the ash of erased letters. Toned down on old phones.
The theme
On Halloween eve, the universe is a text written in gold letters across the void, line after line, and something has taken the cursor: it is going backwards and erasing everything. You are the full stop at the end of the last sentence, running along the lines from word to word, ahead of the bar that swallows the letters. At the end of the fifth line you settle where the sentence ends. The cursor stops right behind you, blinks, and the view pulls back onto a galaxy made of text.
The mechanics
A run that never stops: tap to jump (finger, click, Space), hold to jump higher. The ground is the text: you run on the tops of the letters, tall letters are walls, the spaces between words are chasms. Each line adds a rule you work out by playing: dots caught in mid-air give you another jump, red capitals collapse under your feet, upside-down question marks flip gravity and make you run beneath the line. Fall into the margin or let the cursor catch you, and you go back to the last pilcrow; there are two per line.
Palette
A midnight-blue void #050814 and ink nebulae, gold letters #e9c46a shining like illumination, capitals rubricated in vermilion #e63b2e, ultramarine #2a5bd7 as an echo, the full stop in golden white #fff3c4, and the cursor, a bar of ice-white light #d9fbff that leaves ash behind it. IM Fell DW Pica for the letters, IM Fell English SC for the title. An illuminated manuscript in the act of vanishing.
