Arcade
Short games, played on a flat screen over the world. A run takes under two minutes, and eight of the ten pay coins — the same coins the courses pay, buying the same characters. The two board games pay nothing and are here to be played rather than earned from.
How the arcade works
The cabinets are inside the world. You walk up to one and it opens on a flat screen over the scene, which is why they are 2D games in a 3D game rather than a separate part of the site. Each one loads only when you open it — a cabinet is a ninety-second game and should not be in the download for a course.
Nothing here costs money and nothing can be bought. Coins are earned by playing and spent on characters; they convert to nothing in either direction. Payouts are computed on the server, because a balance held by the browser is a balance a player can edit.
Two of the nine report a placement rather than a score — Ludo and Snakes & Ladders are board games, and a running total during a four-minute match would be a readout that is actively wrong about what you are doing.
What each one is
- Chunk Runner0.5 coins per point
An endless runner across broken ground. You never stop moving forward; the only input is a jump you can hold to glide, and the ground stops being reliable almost immediately. A run lasts as long as you keep landing on something. - Tower Stack2 coins per point
Blocks swing past and you drop them on the stack below. Anything hanging over the edge is sheared off, so the tower narrows every time you are late. A run ends when the tower is too thin to land on. - Ludopays nothing
The four-seat board game, with three bots in the other seats. You roll, you choose which of your pieces to move, and getting home first is the whole of it. A match runs a few minutes. - Snakes & Ladderspays nothing
Snakes and Ladders with a hand of cards on top of it. The board still decides where you land; the cards are the part you control, and spending one at the right moment is the difference between this and the version you played as a child. - ECHO0.2 coins per point
A room, run against a clock, and then run again beside a replay of the run you just did. Every attempt adds another copy of you to the room, and solving it means using your own past selves as part of the solution. - Gravity Shift0.2 coins per point
A ball and four walls, where down is whichever direction you choose. Every flip commits you to a fall, and the fall is watched rather than steered — the decision is made before it starts. - One Bullet0.2 coins per point
One shot per room, aimed and released, and it has to do everything the room needs. It has the slowest music in the arcade because aiming is a held breath and a track that hurries the shot costs you the room. - SwarmRush0.05 coins per point
You are one of a crowd, eating what is smaller than you and avoiding what is not. Dashing and splitting are both available and both dangerous. It has the fastest music in the arcade because something happens every second or two. - Reflex0.05 coins per point
A target appears, a ring closes on it, and you hit it before the ring does. That is the entire game. It has no top and no length limit — a perfect player runs until they decide to stop. - Untwine0.05 coins per point
A board packed with bent lines, each with an arrowhead at one end. Tap a line and it slides out the way its arrow points, the body following the head round every bend — but only if nothing stands between the head and the edge of the board. If something does, the line runs into it, springs back and costs one of your three hearts. Clear the board and a bigger, more tangled one is dealt; every fifth board is a smaller breather, some of them in a shape. - Ragdoll Rumble0.05 coins per point
A best-of-three duel between two robots on the Magma Gauntlet: two stone banks, a bridge between them that rides up and down, a high bridge over it, and lava under everything. The robots are ragdolls driven by muscles, so nothing is an animation — the stick names a direction and the weapon arm reaches for it. Every twelve seconds the lava shows a tell and two seconds later rises far enough to swallow the low bridge. Play it against the CPU on three levels, or with a second person on the same screen or keyboard.
Coins
A run pays its score times the cabinet's rate. The first 500 coins a day come at full rate and everything after that at a fifth, up to 1000 a day. Scores and best runs keep counting after that — only the payout stops, and it slows rather than stopping dead, because a number that freezes reads as a bug and a number that slows reads as a rule.
The rates are not arbitrary. A cabinet with a natural ceiling pays more per point than one you can play forever: Tower Stack narrows to nothing however well you play, so it pays two coins a point, while Reflex has no end at all and pays a twentieth.