Free browser game · Endless courier run
The Flash RunnerBlockchain Escape
Carry one encrypted Data Coin across a rain-soaked neon city. Jump firewalls, slide under laser curtains and charge a Flash Dash to break through gates. Pick up coin fragments before they burn out.
Points only. No crypto, no wallet, no purchases, no prizes.
Play
Run the delivery
Press Start or Space. Every relay mast you reach pays +300. On a phone, the Slide, Dash and Jump buttons appear under the road.
Score0
Distance0 m
Next drop · +300600 m
Streak×1
Laser gate ahead · hold Dash for a full charge
Delivery 01 · Neon District
Take the coin and run
Jump firewalls, slide under lasers, and hold then release Dash to break through gates. Every relay mast you reach pays +300.
- Space jump
- ↓ slide
- Shift hold, release: dash
No runs yet on this device. Your best score will be kept here.
Paused
The coin is safe. Press P or Esc to carry on.
Run over
0 points
New best on this device
- Distance
- 0 m
- Coins delivered
- 0
- Fragments taken
- 0
- Burnt out
- 0
- Longest streak
- 0
- Best score
- 0
Keyboard: Space, W or ↑ to jump, S or ↓ to slide, hold Shift, D or → and release to Flash Dash, P or Esc to pause, M for sound. Touch: the Slide, Dash and Jump buttons on the game.
01 · Controls
Three moves and one charge
The courier runs on their own. You decide when to jump, when to slide and how long to hold the dash.
| Move | Keyboard | Touch | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jump | ↑/W/Space | Jump button | Hold for a higher jump, tap for a short hop. |
| Slide | ↓/S | Slide button | Press in the air to drop fast and slide as you land. |
| Flash Dash | Shift/→/D | Hold Dash, let go | Hold to charge, release to dash. Nothing happens under 0.3 s. |
| Pause | P/Esc | Pause button | The run also pauses if you switch tabs. |
| Sound | M | Sound button | The soundtrack and effects are made in code. |
02 · The road
What the city throws at you
Three things to take and four to get past. Everything below is drawn by the same code as the game.
Take
-
Coin fragment
10–30 points × streak
Pieces of the Data Coin, left along the rooftops. Each one starts to decay as it comes on screen, shrinks and turns red, then burns out after 3.2 seconds. The fresher it is when you take it, the more it pays.
-
Hot fragment
Burns out in 2.3 s
A brighter fragment set up high on the stairways. It decays faster, so you have to reach it on your first jump.
-
Relay mast
+300 points
A green beacon every 600 metres. Run past it and the coin is delivered: +300 points, straight onto your score. The HUD counts down the metres to the next one.
Get past
-
Firewall
Jump, or dash through
A low wall of burning code bricks. Jump over it, or burn straight through with a Flash Dash of any strength.
-
Laser curtain
Slide, or dash through
Beams hanging from a housing above the road. They stop just above a sliding courier. Slide under. You cannot jump over a curtain.
-
Laser gate
Full-charge dash only
A beam from roof to road. Nothing gets past except a fully charged Flash Dash. A warning shows in the HUD when a gate is close, so start holding early.
-
Ghost blocks
Vanish 0.22 s after you land
Pink hatched platforms over empty air. The whole row disappears a fraction of a second after your first step. Land and jump again at once.
03 · Difficulty
The city speeds up
Speed climbs with every metre. New kinds of road join at fixed distances, so each run teaches the next.
- 0 m33 m/s
Firewalls, laser curtains, short rooftop gaps, one loading dock.
- 400 m37 m/s
Ghost blocks, wider gaps, stairways with hot fragments.
- 600 m38 m/s
First relay mast. +300 for the first delivery, then one every 600 m.
- 1,200 m44 m/s
Laser gates appear. Charge while you jump the wall before them.
- 2,400 m55 m/s
Gauntlets and ghost hops. The flat stretch between pieces gets shorter.
- 3,220 m62 m/s
Top speed. The soundtrack is at its fastest, about 140 beats a minute.
04 · Scoring
Where the points come from
Every fragment you take adds one to your streak. Let one burn out, or run past it, and the streak drops back to zero.
| What happens | Points |
|---|---|
| Coin fragment | 10 to 30, × your streak multiplier |
| Each metre run | 1 point |
| Each metre during a Flash Dash | 2 points |
| Coin delivered at a relay mast | +300 points |
- 0–7 fragments
- 8–15
- 16–23
- 24 and up
The Data Coin is a story object and the score is just a number on your screen. There is no cryptocurrency, no wallet, no betting and nothing to buy or win. Points cannot be exchanged for anything.
05 · How it’s built
No images, no libraries, one canvas
For the curious: the whole game is about 1,700 lines of plain JavaScript drawing on a single Canvas 2D element.
One loop, fixed steps
requestAnimationFrame draws each frame, but the rules run in fixed 1/120-second steps inside it. A jump is the same height on a 60 Hz laptop and a 120 Hz phone.
Four layers of city
The skyline, the lit towers and the pillars with cables are drawn once into off-screen canvases and tiled. They slide at 8%, 25% and 55% of your speed, with rain and neon signs drawn on top. The signs pulse on the kick drum.
Route pieces as text
The road is built from 20 hand-made pieces, each three rows of characters: pickups, hazards and ground height. A new piece is picked at random from the ones allowed at your distance.
Nothing thrown away
Columns of road, hazards, fragments and sparks come from object pools. When something scrolls off the left edge it goes back in the pool for the next piece, so a long run does not keep allocating memory.
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g 00000000000000006 · Questions
Before you ask
Yes. It runs in your browser from this page. There is no account, no download, nothing to buy and no advertising.
No. “Blockchain” is the setting of the story and the Data Coin is the parcel your courier carries. Fragments, the streak and the +300 delivery bonus only add points. You cannot stake, buy, win or cash out anything.
Gates only open for a full charge. Hold the dash key for 0.75 seconds, until the ring round the courier flashes white and gold, then let go just before the gate. A shorter dash still works on firewalls and curtains.
They decay. Each fragment has 3.2 seconds from the moment it comes on screen (hot fragments have 2.3). It shrinks and turns red as the time runs out, then burns up. The faster you run, the fresher they are when you reach them.
Yes. Three buttons appear along the bottom of the game on touch screens: Slide, Dash and Jump. Hold Dash to charge and lift your finger to fire. Turn the phone sideways for a wider view of the road.
In your browser’s local storage on this device, under the key thrumjoy_flashrunner. It holds your best score, best distance, total deliveries, number of runs and the sound setting. Nothing is sent to a server.
Yes. You start at 33 metres a second and speed up the further you go, up to 62. Ghost blocks join at 400 m, laser gates at 1,200 m and the densest pieces at 2,400 m.
Made in Putney, by one person
The Flash Runner is written, drawn and scored in code by Riley Evans. If you find a piece of road you think cannot be cleared, or something that does not work on your device, send an email. Every message gets read.