Rungs: Ladder Jump

A figure climbs a shaft rung by rung. Something is rising underneath it. You do not steer. The climber walks by itself along whatever rung it is standing on, turns around when it runs out of rung, and jumps when you tap. The jump never changes: same height, same airtime, same distance across, at rung 2 and at rung 200. Every decision in the game is the same decision, asked again — is the climber in the right place, facing the right way, right now? ONE TAP, ANYWHERE No buttons, no swiping, no tilting. Playable one-handed on a train without looking at where your thumb lands. A SCORE THAT MEANS SOMETHING One point is one rung, and one rung is a fixed height. Your score is a distance, so forty is exactly twice as high as twenty. No multipliers, no inflation, no combo maths. FAIR, AND WE MEAN IT MECHANICALLY Every rung is placed by working backwards from the set of positions you could jump from, so a rung that cannot be reached is not a rung the game is able to build. The window you have to take off in is never shorter than 110 milliseconds at any height. The rung you are aiming at is always on screen and lit before you have to commit to it. When you die, it was you. IT LOOKS LIKE THE TIME IT IS The top of the shaft is open to the sky, and the sky is the one outside your window: dawn, midday, dusk, night, blended across the hours. Underneath you the vent is the only thing casting light, so everything in the frame is lit from below and falls into shadow on top. Nothing in it is a photograph — every line is drawn as vectors while you play, so it is sharp on any screen. COINS, AND A SECOND CHANCE Coins drop above the rungs, on the line a good jump already takes. Spend them to carry on after a fall, or watch a short video instead. Fifteen endless achievement tracks pay out as you clear them, and twelve ember palettes re-light the entire shaft — one light source, so changing it changes everything.