An endless runner, and the oldest shape there is: one figure on one trail, and things in the way. Your runner never stops and never steers. You have two buttons — one to leave the ground, one to get flat — and the whole game is reading what is coming and pressing the right one at the right moment, while the trail keeps arriving faster than you would like.
The one idea
Everything on the trail is one of two things. Either it stands up out of the ground — a cactus, a grave, a stump, a log — and you jump it, or it hangs across the trail at head height — the gallows, the eagle — and you duck under it. There is no third answer and nothing to steer around. The question each time is only which, and when.
Controls
- Space / ↑ Jump. W works too. A tap is a short hop; hold it for the full jump.
- ↓ Duck, for exactly as long as you hold it. S works too.
- On a phone Tap the right half of the trail to jump; hold the left half to duck. Two thumbs work: one on each side.
- With a mouse The same split — press on the right to jump, hold on the left to duck.
- Enter / Space Start a run, or run again after a fall.
The jump: a hop or a full one
The jump is the one control with a shape to it. Let go while you are still rising and the rest of the lift is cut, so a tap is a short hop — enough for a low rock or a grave. Hold and you get the full jump: about six tenths of a second in the air, high enough for the tallest saguaro and long enough to carry a wide pile of bones or the gap in the forest trail.
Holding jump through a landing jumps again the instant your feet touch, which is handy on a string of obstacles and fatal when the next thing needs a duck instead.
The duck
Ducking is a state, not a move: you are down for exactly as long as you hold it and up the moment you let go, with nothing to wait out. Two rules make it a decision rather than a reflex:
- You can't duck in the air. If you jump into something that hangs over the trail, there is no saving it on the way up.
- You can't jump from a duck. Let go of the duck first.
Two worlds
You pick a country on the start card, and can change it after any run. The trail underneath is identical — same speed, same spacing, same jump — and each world keeps its own best.
The Desert
A skeleton on the flat. Jump the graves, the steer skulls and heaps of bones, the rocks and the saguaro; duck under the gallows. Watch for the tumbleweed: it rolls at you half again as fast as the ground moves, so it arrives sooner than your eye expects. The light changes every four hundred metres — morning, noon, dusk, and a night you can barely see in — and then comes round again.
The Forest
A bear on a mountain trail. Jump the stumps and the logs, the pond (feet in the water is the end of the run) and the gap — a hole in the trail you fall into if you are on the ground over it, which only a full jump carries cleanly. Duck the eagle, which swoops in to head height as it reaches you. The forest has its own roller too: a round log that comes at you faster than the trail.
How it gets harder
The trail starts at a walk and builds to a sprint over the first 1,200 metres. New things are let in as you go: the first thing to duck from about 60m, the rollers from 90m, the forest's gap from 220m, the tallest saguaro from 260m.
Past 1,200m the speed only creeps up, but the trail itself gets meaner all the way out to about 6,000m: less slack between obstacles, more of the wide and awkward ones, more things to duck. Late in a run the hard part is not speed but reading — less time between something appearing at the edge and arriving at your feet.
Every gap the trail gives you is measured to leave a real moment on the ground before the next jump, at any speed. When a run ends, it ended on a read you missed — never on a trail with no answer.
Scoring
Distance is the score, in metres, counted up in the corner as you run, with your best beside it. There is nothing to collect, nothing to buy and no power-ups: it is you, the trail, and whether you can still read it at full speed.
Your best in each world is saved on your device. Signed in to Expedition Games, your runs also go on the Trailblazer leaderboard — one Furthest run board for both worlds, since they are the same trail at the same speed.
Achievements
Signed in, Trailblazer keeps six badges. They appear on your account page with every other game's:
- On the Trail — run 250 metres. Up to Speed — run a full kilometre.
- Long Haul — run 3 kilometres. Ultra — run 5 kilometres.
- Nightfall — run the desert until night falls, 1,200 metres in.
- Both Countries — finish a run in the desert and one in the forest, on the same device.
Tips
Tap low things, hold tall ones
A full jump is a long time in the air. Spent on a small rock it puts you down late, into whatever is next; a quick tap gets you over and back on the ground with time to read.
Watch the edge, not your runner
Your runner does the same thing every stride. Everything you need to know arrives at the right-hand edge of the trail — look there, and decide before it is close.
Let go of jump before a duck
Holding jump re-jumps on landing, and you can't duck in the air. If something to duck follows something to jump, release jump as you clear the first and be ready on the second.
Count the roller in
The tumbleweed and the round log close faster than everything else. Jump them earlier than a still obstacle of the same size.
Two thumbs on a phone
Rest one thumb on each side. Moving one thumb back and forth between the halves is how the gallows and the eagle get you.
Good to know
- Your best for each world, and the world you last ran, are saved on your device; clearing your browser data clears them.
- No account is needed to play. Signing in only adds the leaderboard and the badges.
- It plays in portrait or landscape, on a phone, a tablet or a desktop.
- Trailblazer was called Desert Dash until it grew a second world; old links still work.