Snow Rush

Snow Rush is a three-lane snowboarding endless runner in full 3D, drawn like a vintage ski poster come to life. Your rider in a red jacket, beanie and goggles carves down a steep mountain run that rolls over a crest toward a valley far below, between ridges of rock and pine, while the mountain throws everything it has at you. Swipe left and right to carve between the lanes, swipe up or tap to jump, and swipe down to duck: the same swipe controls you know from the most popular phone runners, in a free game you play in your browser with no download.

The mountain is the star. Snowy pines and boulders fill whole lanes, fallen logs and crevasses have to be hopped, and race banners ask you to duck. Moguls pop you into the air, and if you jump just as one pops you, you launch into big air. An ice sheet across the run means no carving until you are off it, so pick your lane before you slide onto it. A tall pine beside the run creaks and falls across the slope as you come close, a yeti steps out of the trees and walks into a lane, a snow groomer drives straight up at you, and kickers launch you onto long boxes to ride. Late in a long run an avalanche breaks loose behind you: ride clean and it falls back, stumble and it gains.

Seven power-ups keep every run different. The shield takes one hit, the magnet pulls in every coin nearby and 2× doubles your points. The glider lifts you on a red and white hang glider over everything for five seconds, and the coins ahead rise into the air to meet you: steer through the floating coin lines and up an arc of coins to a big coin worth ten at the top of the climb. The snowball cannon blasts whatever stands in your lane, turbo tuck sends you flying at half again the speed and smashes through anything you touch, and gold rush turns the whole slope ahead into coins. Each one is explained the first time you pick it up.

Every run starts gently. The first stretch shows one thing at a time with a small hint at the bottom of the screen, and each of the mountain's hazards gets a gentle first appearance of its own before it joins the mix: a single crevasse in your lane, a mogul field, an ice sheet with nothing at its end, one falling tree, one yeti. Then the slope gets busier and faster. Your first hit is only a stumble, so a newcomer's first runs last a minute or two, while the best riders chase long clean runs.

There are two ways to ride. Endless has no timer: the run goes on until you wipe out or the avalanche buries you, and the leaderboard is about how far down the mountain you got. Timed is the same slope on a 90-second clock for a quick round. Every metre you ride earns points, coins and big airs add more, and a clean-run multiplier grows by one every 15 seconds without a stumble, up to ×4.

Snow Rush plays well on every device and fills the screen it is on. On a computer use the arrow keys or WASD, hold Space to jump higher, and press P to pause; on a phone, swipe in any direction and hold after swiping up. It sits with our other endless runner games, reaction games and action games, and its Timed mode is one of our quick games, on mobile or PC. Play as many runs as you like: your best counts on the all-time and weekly leaderboards, and top runs are verified by replaying your inputs on our servers.