An endless climb up a shaft with no top. Your ninja is always clinging to a wall and always sliding down it, so height is something you are constantly losing — the only way up is to let go. One tap kicks off, arcs across, and sticks the other side ten metres higher. You never choose the wall. You only choose when.
The one idea
There are two walls, and the ninja is always on one of them, so "which wall do I jump to" is never a question — it is always the other one. That is what makes a single button enough. Everything the game has is built to make the timing of that button matter, and it does that with two rules.
First, clinging costs height. A ninja on the wall slides steadily downward, a bit under three metres a second. Waiting is never free, so hesitating is a real decision with a real price rather than a safe default.
Second, a jump gains a fixed amount. Every kick takes you exactly ten metres up from wherever you left — not from where you should have left. So the way to climb quickly is to leave early and often, and the way to climb at all is to leave at a moment when the far wall has somewhere to catch you.
Put together: the longer you wait for a safe landing, the lower the landing you were waiting for has become. That tension is the whole game.
Controls
- Tap / click Anywhere on the shaft. Kicks off the wall, or spends your second kick if you're already in the air.
- Space The same thing. ↑, ←, → and Enter also work.
- N New climb.
- P Pause and resume.
- ↻ New climb.
- ⚙ Settings: the ninja, and painted or vector art.
The second kick
Tap again in mid-air and the ninja kicks off nothing at all, re-aims, and lands a few metres higher than it would have — about three and a half. You get one per jump, and it recharges only when you stick a wall.
It is worth thinking of as a correction rather than a bonus. It buys you height when there is room above the landing you were headed for, and it finds the spikes when there isn't. Spending it on every jump out of habit is how good runs end.
The rule to hold in your head is simple: while airborne, the first tap is always the double kick, and every tap after it queues up your next jump so it fires the instant you land. The two can never collide.
What's trying to stop you
The walls are not bare. Four things sit on them, and the mix gets meaner the higher you climb:
- Spikes — fixed teeth on a stretch of wall. Land on them and the run is over. They do not move, so they are purely a question of reading the wall before you leave.
- Saw blades — out from the wall on an arm, turning. They occupy the middle of the shaft rather than the edge, so they threaten the crossing and not just the landing.
- Wrecking balls — the same idea with a heavier head and a different rhythm.
- Sliders — spiked blocks that will not stay still, tracking up and down a stretch of wall. A landing that was clear when you set off may not be when you arrive.
And the shaft itself narrows as you go, from sixty-odd units across down to fifty, tightening steadily over the first several hundred metres. Less room to cross means less time in the air, which means less time to change your mind.
The generator always leaves a way up. Every stretch of wall keeps protected bands on both sides — there is always a clean landing available, at some height, on some wall. A run that ends ended because of when you jumped, not because the shaft closed.
How height is measured
In metres, counted from the floor, and it only ever counts your highest point — sliding back down does not take it off you. Ten metres a jump means the number is also a jump counter in disguise: 300m is thirty clean kicks in a row.
Your best is kept on the device and drawn into the shaft as a dashed line with the number on it, so on a good run you climb past your own previous record and see it go by.
The ninja and the art
Four ninjas — Shadow, Crimson, Frost and Jade — and two ways to draw the whole game: painted, which is lit stonework and torchlight, or vector, which is the same shaft hand-inked and flat.
All of it is purely cosmetic, and that is measured rather than promised: the game runs every character in both art styles over the same set of seeds and checks that every run comes out identical — same height, same number of jumps, same cause of death. Nothing you pick here changes the climb.
Tips
Leave earlier than feels comfortable
The instinct is to wait for a landing that looks perfect. But you are sinking while you wait, so the perfect landing is drifting out of reach as you look at it. Most runs that end at fifty metres ended because of hesitation, not because of a hazard.
Look at the far wall, not at your ninja
Your ninja is doing the one thing it ever does. The information is all on the other side: where the clear stretch is, whether a slider is heading into it, and whether a saw is sweeping the space you'd cross.
Save the second kick for a reason
Keep it in your pocket until you can see what it is for — clearing spikes that sit just above your landing, or stretching over a slider that has moved into the way. Spent reflexively at the top of every arc, it mostly just puts you into whatever is above.
Moving hazards have a beat — use it
Saws and sliders are on cycles, not random. Watch one for a moment before you commit and you can leave on the half of the cycle that has it going away from you rather than into you.
A queued jump is your friend near the top
When the shaft is narrow and the flights are short, tapping just before you land means the next kick fires the instant you stick. That is often the difference between clearing a moving block and watching it arrive.
Don't chase the number
The dashed best-line is motivating and it is also a distraction. The climb does not get easier because you're close to a record; it gets harder because the shaft has narrowed. Play the wall in front of you.
Good to know
- Your best height and your choice of ninja and art are saved on your device.
- No account, and nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears your best and your settings.
- Built for portrait — it is a tall shaft and a phone is a tall screen. It plays in landscape and on a desktop too, where the shaft simply gets narrower.
- One button, so it plays identically with a thumb, a mouse or a keyboard.