How to play Dusk Runner

Dusk Runner is an endless runner. The fox runs on its own, and your job is to keep it alive for as long as possible by jumping and ducking at the right moments. The run ends the moment the fox touches an obstacle, and your score is the distance it covered, in metres.

The controls

There are only two actions. Jump with Space, the up arrow, or a tap anywhere on the screen. Duck with the down arrow or the Duck button on a touch screen.

The jump is variable. A quick tap gives a short hop, enough for a small cactus or a rock. Holding the button carries the fox higher and further, which tall cacti and clusters of two or three need. Two small timing aids make the controls feel fair: a jump pressed a fraction of a second before landing is remembered and fires the instant the fox touches the ground, and a jump pressed a fraction of a second after running off a landing still counts.

Ducking makes the fox low and long. In mid-air, holding duck pulls the fox down faster, which is useful for landing early before the next obstacle.

The obstacles

Cacti come singly and in clusters of two or three, short and tall. Rocks are low and wide. Then come the bats, which appear further into a run and fly at three heights. A low bat skims the sand and must be jumped like a cactus. A bat at head height will hit a running fox, but you can duck under it or jump clean over it. A high bat flies over a running fox harmlessly, and the danger is jumping into it, so when one is coming the right move is to keep running.

Speed and distance

The fox starts at a gentle pace and gets faster with every metre, up to a top speed it reaches after about three kilometres. Every hundred metres the counter flashes. Along the way the sun sets, the stars come out, and later the sky lightens into dusk again.

Everyone sees the same stretch of desert ahead, whatever the size of their screen, and the game runs at the same speed on every display, so a distance means the same thing on a phone as on a gaming monitor.

Fair by construction

The course is generated so that every obstacle can be cleared. After each one, the gap to the next is at least the ground covered in one full jump plus a margin, at the speed the fox will be running when it gets there. That guarantee is checked by an automated runner that plays kilometres of courses through the game's own physics, and still clears everything when it jumps a tenth of a second early or late.

Daily run and free run

The Daily run is one fixed course per day, the same for everyone, so distances can be compared fairly. You can run it as often as you like and your best of the day is kept. Completing a daily run on consecutive days builds a streak. A Free run is a new course every time, and its share link takes your friend to that exact course.