Boulder Escape

The boulder in Boulder Escape is as wide as the road, wall to wall, so there is no lane to hide in. You run toward the camera with it filling the screen behind you, which shows exactly how close it is; what you see late is what lies ahead, coming up from the bottom of the screen. The road is 500 m to the Sanctuary Gate, and your pace climbs on its own from 6.8 m/s to 9.8 m/s.

How the boulder hunts

It sets off when the countdown ends, about two seconds of running behind the back row. From then on it keeps a set lead behind the last runner still on the road: 1.9 seconds of their running for the first 150 m, tightening to 1.25 seconds by 250 m. Inside that lead it rolls a little slower than you, so clean running wins ground back. Drop behind it and it closes at up to 4 m/s faster than you run.

Every obstacle you hit stops you for 0.8 s and knocks you back a metre, roughly 0.9 s of lead gone. Early on you can take two hits in a row; from halfway, one, and a second close behind it usually ends you unless you burn Boost in between.

It does not only watch the back. If the leader gets more than 3.5 seconds of running clear, it speeds up to stay with them and rolls over the back of the field on the way. Smashing through the big gates at 170 m and 330 m knocks 2.8 m/s off it and holds it for two thirds of a second: breathing room, not a rescue.

The road

The obstacles stand in the same places every round, so the road is worth learning. Hurdle logs and 2.2 m spike trenches are jumped; missing a trench is a stumble, not a fall. Portcullis teeth and the two big gates are slid under. Granite barricades block some lanes and are too tall to jump.

The first 160 m brings in each obstacle more or less alone, between the gates they come in pairs, and the last stretch ends with spikes, a hurdle and a portcullis 6 m apart, just before a clear run to the gate.

Boost and runners

Hold Q to burn Boost for 35% more speed; the bar starts with 1.5 seconds in it. Green pads give 35% for 1.5 s and add a second to the bar. Unlike Tomb Run, a pad's burst and Boost multiply here, to about 1.8 times your pace. Half of the ten pads sit in the middle lane.

Runners are solid. You cannot run through someone ahead of you in your lane: you are held at their back, at their speed, however much Boost you burn. Change lane or jump to pass. A runner who has just hit something stops blocking, and you go straight through.

Staying alive

• Press S in the air and you drop and slide the moment you land. The last hurdle and portcullis come less than a second apart, and this is how you make them.
• A jump pressed just before you land goes off as you touch down, so you can chain spikes and logs without waiting to feel the ground.
• Get out from behind slow runners before the barricade rows. With three lanes some rows leave only the middle open, and a queue moves at the speed of its front runner.
• Keep some Boost for after a mistake, above all past 250 m, where the lead is short.
• At the back with the leader far ahead, expect the boulder to speed up. Burn before it reaches you, not after.

Bigger rooms

The road is three lanes wide for up to 4 runners, five for up to 8 and seven for up to 16, and the boulder grows to fill it. With the pads fixed at ten, a big room crowds the pad lanes, and in this race a crowd blocks.

Once nobody is left on the road and someone made it, the boulder charges the rest of the way and jams in the Sanctuary Gate. Escapers rank in the order they got through; the crushed rank by how long they lasted.