THE SPORE HOLLOW

A ROAD THAT CROSSES ITSELF

The third world is a violet hollow full of slow spores and pale mushroom domes. Its road is a figure eight: Kai runs one loop, passes through the crossing in the middle, and runs the other loop the opposite way round. The crossing turns itself slowly, so the eight is never quite the same shape twice.

The road here is also narrower. The figure eight takes one lane away from whatever Kai's form would normally give him, so a run that had four lanes in the Pale Tide has three in the Spore Hollow. Fewer lanes means fewer places to go, and the walls are closer together.

NEW HERE: THE DRIFTER

The drifter is a block that does not stay in its lane. It slides sideways across the road, leaning into the turn as it goes, and it hits like a wall. Because a moving block is hard to read at speed, the game marks it for you. A red X rides the lane it is about to close, and a ring on the road marks the way past it.

That pair of marks is a language the rest of the game keeps using: an X means do not be here, a ring means go here. The keeper's hand speaks it too, later on. Follow the ring and you do not need to judge the drifter's path at all.

THE WORLDS START TO SPEED UP

The first two worlds share a top speed. From the Spore Hollow on, every world runs a little faster than the one before it, so this is where the pace starts to climb. The game never hides that ceiling from you: the road gets faster world by world, and each world has its own limit, so learning the pace of one world is learning a fixed thing.

HOW TO PLAY THE SPORE HOLLOW

Trust the rings. When a drifter is moving, look at where its ring is, not at the block. With one lane fewer, also think about where your next tap will put you: tapping moves Kai one lane at a time and bounces back at the edges, so the lane you want might be two taps away. Tap early and tap once.