Crumbling Tomb

Crumbling Tomb is a race against your own footprints. Its floors are made of stone hex tiles, and every one you step on gives way less than a second later. Nobody can stand still, so the round is really about where you choose to walk, when you choose to fall, and who you can push into falling first.

How a round unfolds

Everyone starts on a ring around the top floor of a ruined tomb, facing the middle. Its walls have fallen away: the five floors stand open to the desert on sandstone pillars, over a lake of lava. The moment a foot lands on a tile, its glaze glows. Half a second later it turns red and rattles; at about 0.8 seconds it breaks away and drops. The tile only cracks once, so running back across one you already crossed is the same as running across a hole.

Fall through a hole and you land on the floor below, seven and a half metres down, with a thud and a puff of dust. There are five floors, coloured so you always know how deep you are: gold at the top, then turquoise, deep blue, purple, and carnelian glowing just over the lava. Your badge says which floor you are on. Fall past the last floor and you land in the lava, and you are out.

The round lasts up to two minutes. Last one standing wins. If more than one player is still up at the buzzer, the ones on higher floors place above the ones lower down, so staying high matters right to the end.

Controls

• Move with WASD or the stick. Every tile you touch starts its countdown, so walking in a straight line eats a straight line of floor.
• Jump with Space. You only crack the tile you land on, so hopping over a tile saves it for later.
• Shove with Q. It pushes whoever is just in front of you, within about 1.7 metres, hard enough to send them across a tile or two. It recharges in 1.5 seconds.

When you are out

Being out does not end your round. If a shove or a ghost's crack put you in the lava, your screen stays on the splash for a moment and names who did it. Then your ghost floats over the highest floor anyone is still on, and drifts down after them as each floor empties. A bright outline below you marks the tile your crack will take: the one under you, or the next one down if you are over a hole. Q cracks it, and a pale bolt shows everyone where it struck. The crack recharges every four seconds, and the outline stays dim until it is ready. The tile a player stands on is already cracking, so crack the tiles around them instead and take away where they can go.

Tactics

• Spend each tile fully. A tile stays up for about 0.8 seconds after you touch it. Stand on it until it starts to shake, then step to a fresh neighbour. Rushing from tile to tile burns floor twice as fast as you need to.
• Keep somewhere to go. Before you step, check that the next tile has unbroken tiles around it. Landing on a tile with holes on every side leaves you nothing but a drop.
• Drop on purpose. If your floor is nearly gone, step into a hole over a part of the floor below that is still whole. You land on fresh ground instead of on someone else's leftovers.
• Shove near cracks. A shove is worth most when a rival is standing next to red tiles or a hole. Pushed onto glowing tiles, they have half a second to get off.
• Jump to save floor. A long jump across a tile leaves it intact behind you, which can be the bridge you need on the way back.

Small rooms and big rooms

The tomb always has five floors; it is the floors that grow with the room. With up to four players each floor has 61 tiles, from five to ten players 91, and from eleven to sixteen 127. Each tile is about two and a half metres across. In a full room the top floor goes quickly, because sixteen sets of footprints are crossing it at once. Plan to spend more of the round on the floors below.

Practice

Before each round there is a short practice on the same floors. Tiles that drop in practice come back after three seconds, as long as nobody is on that floor, so you can try the timing of a crack, a jump and a shove as often as you like before it counts.