BREAKING THE GATE

WHAT THE GATE IS

When a run has grown enough in one world, the road builds a gate. A ring of stone slabs stands across the road and closes every lane but one, and the open lane does not stay put: the gate turns, and the gap moves to another lane every few seconds. The game names it at the top of the screen while it stands.

The gate is fair about it. Once Kai is committed to a lane close to the gate, the gap stops moving, so it can never close on top of you at the last moment. And the gap only ever moves to a lane whose slab is still standing.

HOW IT FALLS

The gap is the safe way past the gate, but it does not end it. The gate only falls when every slab is down, and slabs only come down to a dash. Each dash that reaches the gate breaks the slabs of the lane Kai is in, and once a lane is broken it stays open. So the gate is taken apart one lane at a time, one dash per lane, and a slab that is still standing hits Kai like a wall.

This is where the dash and the line meet. A dash works even with an empty line, so the gate can always be broken. But every dash also releases your line, so a player who has been collecting arrives at the gate with a release ready to cash in on every lane.

WHAT IT GIVES BACK

Breaking the last slab pays, and it gives something back. Kai gets one of his horns back, so a gate can rescue a run that had been hit, and if there is room in the line, a legendary creature joins it as a gift. A gate is the best place in a world to recover, not only the end of it.

AND THEN YOU FALL

When the gate breaks, the road breaks with it. Kai falls through the dark with his line of creatures falling behind him in the same order, the name of the next world stands over the fall, and the next island rises to meet him. Every world below runs a little differently, so read the new road before you get greedy again.