Press and holdan arc shows the jump you are about to make. Drag until it points where you want and let go.
Point at where you want to gothe arc aims from your climber to your thumb. Touch high above you for a tall jump, out to the side for a long flat one. It is the direction from you that counts, not which half of the screen you touched - so you can reach past yourself in either direction wherever you are standing.
Let go to jumpyou only get one jump per landing, so the arc is the decision.
Walls bouncea flat leap into the wall comes back. Bank shots are real.
Relicsthe booster wearing a crown of light. It permanently widens how far off vertical you can aim, or raises your jump, or slows your fall - and it keeps them between runs.
The platforms
Crackedgives way shortly after you land, and the fuse gets shorter the higher you climb.
Springbounces you straight back up without spending your jump.
Rocketfires you a long way up the moment you touch it.
Gooholds you for a beat and takes the power out of your next jump.
Slickno grip. You keep sliding and you will go off the end.
Driftingnever where you left it.
Nestalready occupied. Touching one of them ends the climb.
Slabdown in the halls. It settles under you and keeps going. Do not stand and think.
Capin the caves. A soft bounce that costs you nothing and gains you a little.
Limbin the forest. It bows, then throws you higher than any spring - if you are still on it.
Cloudin the open sky. You sink into it and it thins away underneath you.
Drifting rockout in orbit. A ferry. Ride it as far as you like; there is nothing to hold on with.
Things worth catching
Every zone has one, and hitting it throws you upward - bubbles in the flooded halls, moths in
the caves, birds in the forest, balloons in the open sky, sparks out in orbit. They come
back a few seconds after you take one.
The swarm
They have been coming up since the moment you started, and they follow your best height. Standing still lets them reach you. Falling drops you into them. Early on they are close behind; the higher you get the more rope you have, but they move faster.
Reward bands
The bar at the top fills as you climb. Cross a band and you are given something - a shield, a net, a rocket, or the swarm shoved back down. Every few bands is a safe zone that pushes them a long way back and hands you a shield.
Self-tuning
The game is tuning itself. Every run reports how long it lasted, how high it got and whether the player came straight back; those land on the rungs that were in play, and a cohort of runs closes an epoch and re-picks the numbers. When the shared table is reachable, every player is on the same configuration and the comparison is between epochs rather than between runs. ×n is how much evidence a rung has.