Rounds and winning
Runners collect loose Standard Sparks and try to finish with the strongest score. A round normally completes after no loose or airborne Sparks remain and the brief clear-pending interval has finished. Timed Strategy rounds also end when their clock reaches zero, even when players deliberately leave Sparks inaccessible.
Standings compare held Sparks. A Gnawer Slider defeat can mint bonus Sparks, so held score can exceed the number originally placed on the map. Challenge objectives add their own success test: the locally controlled Runner must satisfy the objective and win when the lesson contains competitors.
Controls and action priority
Action
Push, break terrain, throw a Bomb, or fire a Blaster.
Grab
Hold to pull an eligible block or Runner.
Movement is continuous and cardinal. A direction pressed before a junction is queued and turns at the next valid cell centre. Keyboard uses arrows or WASD, Action uses Space or Enter, Grab uses G, and Escape opens or closes the local round pause menu. Touch offers either an analogue pad or discrete Cross plus red Action and smaller blue Grab controls. Gamepads use the left stick or D-pad, their primary and secondary face buttons, and Start for the local pause menu.
The top-right menu button is available only in an embedded one-player round. Resume keeps the exact frozen simulation tick. Leave Round returns to Challenge, Base, or Skirmish setup and records no result. Shared-local and live online authorities cannot be paused.
Action is contextual. When facing an adjacent movable block, pushing takes priority over every equipped attack, including a push that is rejected. Otherwise an adjacent Destructible Block is broken. With no contextual target, Action fires one Blaster shot if armed, then falls back to throwing a Bomb. Deliberately bracing with an empty Grab press selects the Bomb before either the facing structure or Blaster.
Sparks, sturdiness, contact, and immunity
Standard Sparks are both score and carried strength. Holding at least 20 makes a Runner Sturdy; falling below 20 immediately makes it Light. Sturdiness is not permanent progression.
| Event | Implemented effect |
|---|---|
| Blaster, hostile Bomb, Charged contact, or Slider hit | Scatter up to 10 held Sparks. |
| Bomb blast | Stuns a vulnerable Runner for 5 seconds. The owner keeps their Sparks; an opponent also Scatters. |
| Gnawer bite | Scatter up to 5 held Sparks and stun for 1 second. |
| Runner body contact, gap below 10 | Both bounce; no Spark changes owner. |
| Runner body contact, gap at least 10 | One Spark transfers from the smaller Runner to the larger, followed by asymmetric recoil. |
| Post-Scatter immunity | Blocks another hostile effect during the protected interval. A blocked bullet stops; a Bomb blast continues through the protected Runner. |
| Charge Orb immunity | Blocks bullets, blasts, Slider hits, Gnawer bites, and hostile grabbing while active. |
Scattered Sparks fly to deterministic reachable floor cells, then become collectible again. Recollecting a previously scattered original Spark does not advance the Standard pickup milestones a second time.
Blocks and terrain
Push Block
Sturdy Runners push or pull it exactly one cell.
Slider Block
Any Runner can push it down a lane or pull it one cell.
Destructible Block
Cracked blue cover removed by adjacent Action or a completed Gnawer bite.
A launched Slider collects every loose Spark it crosses for the pusher and takes that Runner's color. It stops before another Runner, Scatters up to 10, and stuns a vulnerable target for 5 seconds. A Slider defeats a Gnawer for a 25-Spark bonus. Blaster shots and Bomb blasts can also remove Destructible Blocks. Permanent walls, Push Blocks, and Sliders themselves are not destructible.
Power-ups
| Pickup | Effect | Stacking and cap |
|---|---|---|
| Charge Orb | Adds 10 seconds of attack and grab immunity. | Adds to time already left; no implemented inventory cap. |
| Blaster | Adds 5 cardinal shots. Shots travel at 24 cells per second and stop at the first solid or Runner hit. | Cumulative ammunition, cap 99. |
| Bomb | Adds one throwable Bomb. Action throws it two cells; block contact makes it rebound onto the block cell and leaving the map loses it. | Cumulative inventory, cap 9. |
| Blast Extender | Adds one cell to the radius of future Bombs. | Three tiers: radius 2 grows to at most 5. Planted Bombs keep the radius they had when thrown. |
| Speed Skates | Add 10 percent of base movement speed for the round. | Three tiers, for at most +30 percent. |
When both inventories are held, ordinary Action fires the Blaster and retains the Bomb. Facing movable or Destructible Block interactions take priority over that ordinary choice. An empty Grab press deliberately stops and braces the Runner; while braced, Action instead selects the Bomb before the block interaction or Blaster. A braced throw may cross exactly one intervening wall or block. Merely bracing without an obstacle does not count as an obstacle throw.
A Blaster shot stops on the first Gnawer, stuns it for 3 seconds, and awards no Sparks. Any Runner may Action-push or Grab/Pull that Gnawer while it remains stunned. Bomb blasts defeat Gnawers and award the Bomb owner 25 held Sparks.
Bombs have a two-second fuse, block movement while planted, can chain other Bombs in stable order, and detonate immediately when hit by a Blaster shot. The blast is a cell-centred circle. Walls, Wrap Gates, movable blocks, planted Bombs, and Destructible Blocks provide cover; a Bomb or Destructible cell is affected but shields cells behind it, and blocked corners do not leak diagonal damage. A blast collects loose Sparks for its owner, defeats Gnawers for the ordinary 25-Spark bonus, and destroys Destructible Blocks. Every vulnerable Runner hit is stunned for 5 seconds and can be pushed. An opponent also Scatters up to 10 Sparks; the owner keeps their Sparks even when self-stunned. Charge and ordinary post-Scatter immunity block both Runner effects without blocking the blast beyond them.
Pickup placement and spawning
Authored pickups
A pickup drawn into a level exists once. After collection it does not respawn. Charge Orbs are also authored, one-use objects and do not respawn.
Standard progress drops
Standard rules make one deterministic spawn attempt when 20, 40, 60, and 80 percent of the original Standard Sparks have been collected for the first time. The attempted sequence is Blaster, Bomb, Blast Extender, then Speed Skates. Slider collection counts; the 25-Spark Gnawer bonus and recollected scattered Sparks do not.
At most two uncollected pickups may exist globally. A milestone that finds that capacity full, or finds no valid reachable floor cell, is consumed and never retried. Candidate cells exclude walls, Wrap Gates, Runners, Gnawers, blocks, Bombs, Sparks, Charge Orbs, landing reservations, and other pickups. At least one Runner must currently be able to reach the cell under Push Block occupancy. Match seed, milestone, pickup kind, and cell index break candidate ties deterministically.
Pickup stations
An Ordnance station contains exactly two items: Bomb, then Blaster. A Utility station contains Speed Skates, then Blast Extender. The first item is present at round start. After it is collected, the second waits five seconds of active round time. If its station cell is blocked or the configured live-pickup capacity is full, it retries without losing the item. Under finite supply, collecting the second item empties the station for the round.
Levels marked for recurring Ordnance keep the same Bomb-to-Blaster sequence. After the Blaster is collected, that station waits 30 complete seconds of active round time before offering its next Bomb. It then waits five active seconds after that Bomb is collected for the next Blaster. Pauses, countdowns and completed rounds do not advance these waits; Utility stations and Standard progress drops never repeat.
Timed Strategy disables progress drops so authored stations cannot compete with them for the live pickup capacity. Teaching rules may disable all random progress drops or lower the capacity deliberately.
Gnawers and Gnawer Nests
Movement and attacks
Gnawers are opt-in dinosaur hazards on selected authored maps. Every half-second they make a deterministic cell decision toward a reachable target. A pursuit turn lasts at most six seconds; after it expires the Gnawer selects another reachable Runner when one exists. Contact or a new attack also ends the pursuit turn.
A bite has a visible one-second wind-up. A vulnerable Runner loses up to five held Sparks and is stunned for one second. The Gnawer then recovers for two seconds, while that victim has four seconds of global protection from all Gnawer bites. Charge or post-Scatter immunity absorbs the Scatter and stun, but the Gnawer still recovers and changes target. A completed bite can remove one Destructible Block.
Defeat and score
A Slider defeats a Gnawer and immediately awards 25 newly minted held Sparks to the pusher. The bonus can make that Runner Sturdy and appears in standings, but does not advance pickup milestones or the clear-all-original-Sparks condition. Gnawers do not collect Sparks and do not enter standings themselves.
Exact population and hatch rules
- Gnawers placed directly in a map are initial hazards. When defeated, they do not respawn.
- A Nest waits 10 active seconds before its first hatch.
- Each Nest may have at most one living Gnawer linked to it.
- Each Nest has a lifetime budget of three hatches. The budget never refills within a round.
- After its linked Gnawer is defeated by a Slider, the Nest waits 20 seconds before trying again.
- If the Nest cell contains a Runner reservation, Gnawer, block, Bomb, pickup, Spark, Charge Orb, Destructible Block, or airborne Spark landing, it waits 1 second and retries.
- The whole simulation has a hard maximum of 32 simultaneously living Gnawers. A due Nest retries after 1 second while that ceiling is full.
- With at most 16 Nests and one active Gnawer per Nest, ordinary authored maps normally stay below the global ceiling. Initial map Gnawers also count toward 32.
Nest order and Gnawer IDs are stable, and all deadlines, remaining hatch budgets, active links, targeting state, and bite effects are authoritative, hashed, replayed, and carried to online clients.
Challenges, chapters, and records
Challenges are focused lessons. Their score records held Sparks positively and active ticks negatively; only a controlled-Runner win clears a competitive lesson. Base chapters require a unique win by the local human. Bot wins, bot takeovers, remote players, and abandoned rounds do not unlock later chapters.
Local records remain installation-local and are not yet paid-account or platform-account records. Hosted series results preserve eligibility information, but the future persistent competitive profile service is a separate planned system.