Worlds and levels

The campaign is thirty levels long. They are grouped into five worlds of three levels each, and the five worlds play through twice: once for levels 1 to 15 and again, harder, for levels 16 to 30. Every level has a fixed layout, so the hazards and gems sit in the same places on every attempt. Clearing a level opens the next one, and Easy and Hard keep separate progress, so each difficulty has its own thirty to unlock.

The running order

The names follow the stages of the alchemical Great Work, which is why the final Easy screen is titled The Great Work and the final Hard screen Magnum Opus. The world a level belongs to is what decides its hazards, its look and its music; the name is only a name.

How long a level is

Level length grows by a fixed step. On Easy, level n is 100 + 4 × n metres, so level 1 is 104 m and level 30 is 220 m. On Hard it is 330 + 10 × n metres, from 340 m up to 630 m. Hard also starts every level 12% faster.

The levels are short by design. Level 1 on Easy is about six seconds of flying and level 30 about eleven. On Hard the range is roughly nineteen to twenty-eight seconds. Within a level the speed also climbs: it starts at the level's own pace and eases up to 20% faster by the finish, with most of that push in the last third. Expect the end of a level to be the hardest part of it.

Every level opens with a short empty stretch, half a bar of its music (a full bar on the very first levels for a new player), so your first tap never flips you into something you could not see.

The worlds

Downtown (levels 1 to 3 and 16 to 18)

A neon city at night, and the place every new player starts. Downtown sorts its hazards by what they are: street things stand on the road (the floor), and overhead things hang from the ceiling. That makes it the easiest world to read, because you always know which wall a type of hazard will come from. Its signature threat is the scanner gate, a beam that fires from one wall across part of the corridor. On the second pass, from level 16, construction cranes with swinging wrecking balls join the road and an elevated train starts running the ceiling rail.

Music: a funk beat built on 808 bass and brass, at about 130 BPM, and the colour show cuts hard on every beat.

The Storm (levels 4 to 6 and 19 to 21)

An ice tempest. The Storm is the first world that puts things in the middle of the corridor: rotating rotors of ice shards, bird flocks, and curtains of ice that crack and fall. Ice spikes grow from both walls, so you cannot sit on either one for free. On the second pass the rotors are bigger and turn faster.

Music: synth tracks at about 130 BPM on the first pass and 139 BPM on the second.

The Belt (levels 7 to 9 and 22 to 24)

An asteroid field. The rocks drift through the corridor rather than sitting on the walls, so the safe line weaves. The Belt is also the world with the most things that help you: crystal geodes to smash, an ion ring that gives you a short burst of invulnerability, and fuse rocks that explode harmlessly behind you for points. Its set piece is the solar flare, once per level, where you must be in a rock's shadow. A rarer pulsar sweep burns half the corridor at once, and it shows up more often on the second pass.

Music: driving techno with travelling arpeggiated synths, at 140 BPM on both passes. The light here sweeps along the corridor instead of cutting on the beat.

The Forge (levels 10 to 12 and 25 to 27)

A volcanic foundry. The floor is the enemy here: lava bubbles burst up from it, the molten floor itself rises, and once per level a furnace tap floods the lower part of the corridor. The Forge's safe line therefore lives high, against the ceiling, where stalactites and pouring ladles wait. On top of the cave sit the machines: hammers, piston rows, grinding wheels and pendulums, all timed to the music. The Forge's colour rule is simple: white-hot and orange kill, cyan coolant helps.

Music: heavier tracks at about 127 BPM on both passes.

The Signal (levels 13 to 15 and 28 to 30)

The inside of the music itself. The walls are a pulsing equaliser, and every hazard moves in time with the beat: kick pistons that punch out on each beat, orbiting dots, sliding faders, a metronome arm, a compressor that clamps both walls shut for a moment. Once per level the music drops out and then the bottom of the corridor floods: get to the ceiling. Gold notes on your route pay extra if you hit them on the beat. The Signal closes each half of the campaign, which makes it the hardest world on both passes.

Music: it borrows the Storm's first track on levels 13 to 15 and Downtown's first track on levels 28 to 30.

The full list of hazards and helpers in each world, with how to read them, is in Hazards, helpers and gems.

The difficulty curve

Pace and hazard density rise across the campaign, with two deliberate rests. Level 10, Albedo, is the slowest level in the game and much less crowded than its neighbours, a breather as you arrive in the Forge. Level 26, Eye of the Storm, does the same job before the final climb. If you are stuck on level 9 or level 25, the next one is a gift.

The second pass is not just the first one again. Each world comes back with new or more frequent hazards, the lengths keep growing, and the speeds keep rising: the last three levels are the fastest in the game.

Music and the beat

Every world has its own soundtrack, and the track changes on the same level as the scenery, so a change in music always means a new world. The beat is not just decoration. The colour of the corridor steps with it, and a flip made within a fraction of a second of the beat scores an ON BEAT bonus. In the Signal, the hazards themselves move on the beat, so listening is half of reading the level. More on using the beat is in Techniques.