How to play Up

Up

Tap where you want to go: the climber jumps and runs toward the spot. Above you is a tower of platforms, one level at a time, and below you the floor is rising. The whole tower is worked out from the game's seed before anybody presses Ready, so every player climbs exactly the same platforms in exactly the same places, each on their own clock, and nobody can get in your way. Whoever the floor catches last takes the round, and if it catches two of you on the same tick the round is a tie. Best of three rounds, up to five.

Play Up Leaderboard

Climbing

Tap or click the play area where you want to go. The climber jumps at once and runs toward that spot, in the air and on the ground, until it gets there. Tap again anywhere to change your mind.
A tap in the air is kept: the climber keeps steering toward it and jumps the moment its feet are down.
On a keyboard the arrows or A and D steer, and space, the up arrow or W jumps. Holding the jump key jumps once; press it again for the next.
A jump rises almost two levels and lands one level up. There is no double jump and no stronger jump.
You can only jump with your feet on a platform. In the air you can still steer.
The climber runs fast enough that every platform can be reached from the one below it, wherever the two are placed.

The tower everybody shares

The platforms come from the game's seed, so there is one tower and every seat climbs it. Nobody gets an easier one.
Every level is one platform, a little under a third of the field wide, placed somewhere across it. The base you start on runs the whole width.
Fifteen in every hundred platforms crumble: land on one and it gives way six tenths of a second later. Jump on, do not stand.
Your screen is handed the platforms as you need them and never the seed, which is shown only when the game is over.

The floor

The floor starts two hundred pixels below the base and rises, slowly at first and faster the longer the round goes on. A climber who never moves is caught within eight seconds.
The floor is the only way a run ends. You cannot fall off the tower: falling only lands you on a lower platform, nearer the floor.
Your height is the moment the floor caught you, and the level you reached is what the page shows.

What the second view is for

The small view beside or under your own shows the same tower with everybody in it, each at their own height.
Climbers at the same height are drawn a little apart so you can count them.
It matters most after you are caught, which under this game's ending rule is when you have nothing else to do: see below.

How a round ends

Each round begins with Ready and a count of three seconds, so nobody is climbing before they have looked at the screen.
Your run ends when the floor reaches your feet, or when it has gone on for three minutes.
THE ROUND DOES NOT END WHEN YOU DO. It runs until every real player has been caught, so being caught first costs you the round and costs nobody else their climb.
A bot is not a real player. Its whole climb is worked out the moment the round starts, so one person against bots ends the instant that person is caught, with no waiting at all. Bots come in three strengths.
If you close the tab mid-climb, the game finishes your run for you rather than forfeiting it: the climber stands where it was and the floor comes. It waits ten seconds of silence first.
A run is stopped at three minutes however well it is going, so a round cannot be held open for ever by somebody who never misses.
The one caught last wins the round. Caught on exactly the same tick is a real tie and is recorded as one.
Every move has the same deadline, chosen when the table is made. In this game it is the dead hand on Ready rather than a limit on a tap.
Each round starts with Ready, so there is a Ready between rounds as well as at the beginning. Leave it unpressed until the deadline passes and the match is over and you have lost it: the others keep the rounds they won.

Worth knowing before you start

Look at the platform after the one you are going to. The sideways distance to it decides where on this one you should land.
Keep moving. The floor gains speed all round, so a pause that is safe at the start is not safe a minute in.
A crumbling platform is a fine place to land and a bad place to think.
Your height is never sent by your screen. The game stores the moments your input changed, at most twenty-four a second, and climbs them again on the server, so what is recorded is what actually happened.

EVERY SEAT HAS ITS OWN CLOCK AND THERE IS NO SHARED WORLD. Your climber answers your thumb and nothing else: the other players cannot push you, block you or hurry you, and a bad connection cannot make your climber jump badly. What your screen sends is not where the climber is, it is THE MOMENTS YOUR INPUT CHANGED, counted from the start of your own run. The server climbs those again against the same tower and that is what your height is, so your height cannot be sent, claimed or edited by anything on your side. A change that arrives late is still accepted at the moment it says it happened, within a window the clock can justify, which is what keeps a slow connection playable. The one thing that window does stop is claiming to be further into your own run than the time that has passed allows. A SCRIPT CAN CLIMB THIS GAME, and it is better to say so than to imply otherwise: the platforms have to reach your screen for your screen to draw them, and the climb is plain arithmetic, so a program reading the page can work out a good run as it goes. What the clock does enforce is that nobody can climb FASTER than real time. So treat the leaderboard as what it is, a record of who climbed well rather than a proof that a person climbed at all, and treat a game against somebody you know as the real one.

Up terms

A tap: One press on the play area. It is a jump and a destination at once: the climber jumps now and runs toward where you tapped until it gets there.
A level: One platform up. The tower is one platform per level, and your level is the highest one you have landed on.
The floor: The rising edge below you. It only ever goes up, and reaching your feet is the one way a run ends.
Your height: The moment the floor caught you, which is what the round is decided on. Two climbers at the same level go on the same tick, which is a tie.
A crumbling platform: One that gives way six tenths of a second after you land on it. Fifteen in every hundred are.
The tower: The whole run of platforms, worked out from the seed before the game starts. One tower per game, the same for every seat.
The second view: The smaller picture of the same tower with the other players in it. Drawn from what the server has told your screen, never guessed.
Climbed out: What happens to the run of somebody who stops playing: the climber stands still and the floor comes, and the height that gives is kept.

Playing it here

Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.