How to play
GRAZE is a one-button neon dodger. You fly a glowing arrow through tunnels of walls, spikes and saws, always at a steep 45 degree angle. Hold to climb, let go to dive. You can hold anywhere: the mouse button, a finger on the screen, Space, Up or W. Touch anything and you crash.
Your score always goes up while you stay alive, but the real points come from grazing. Fly close past a wall, spike or saw without touching it and you get a graze: sparks fly, you score 10 times your multiplier, and your Phase meter fills by a tenth. The faint tinted strip along every wall is the graze zone. Keep grazing and your combo builds, raising the multiplier as high as x10. If you go 3.2 seconds without a graze, the combo drops.
When the Phase meter is full, your next crash does not kill you. Time slows and for just over half a second you pass through anything, scoring bonus points for every obstacle you ghost through. If you are still inside a wall a moment after it wears off, you crash for real.
After a crash the game restarts on its own in just over half a second, and a tap or Space skips the wait. R or Enter restarts straight away, and Esc or P pauses.
Tips and strategy
- Hug the walls on purpose. Your hitbox is much smaller than the graze zone. Sitting inside the graze strip scrapes a new graze about every quarter of a second, which builds the combo fast.
- Short taps, not long holds. The arrow never flies level, so in tight tunnels you steer with quick taps and releases that keep it zig-zagging along the gap.
- Save Phase for the hard bits. A full meter is an extra life, and ghosting through a row of saws is worth a lot of points.
- Watch the portals. Rings in the tunnel change the rules: one makes you tiny, one flips gravity so holding sends you down, one speeds you up, and one mirrors the screen.
- Use practice mode. On the world levels you can turn on Practice, which respawns you at the last green checkpoint diamond. Practice runs do not count towards stars, best scores or ghosts.
What's in it
PLAY is an endless run. Your very first run starts in a wide, gentle teaching tunnel, and after that every run starts after a short two-second intro. It gets harder as you go, and every 30 seconds you go up a speed tier: everything gets 8 per cent faster and the music and colours shift. The same course is kept for three attempts so you can learn it before it changes. Once you reach tier 3 you can start straight from there.
DAILY is one 90-second course a day, the same for everyone, with its own music. When you finish you can copy a short share line of coloured squares showing how your run went, a bit like Wordle.
WORLDS has four worlds of six levels each, 24 in all, lasting about 37 to 67 seconds: SIGNAL (tunnels, pipes and spikes), PULSE (saws, speed portals and narrow tunnels), STATIC (gravity flips and mini size) and OVERDRIVE (mirror zones and everything at once). Each level has three stars: one for finishing, one for finishing with 30 or more grazes, and one for finishing without using Phase. A ghost of your best try flies alongside you.
Every graze also earns you a Spark, which you spend in the SHOP on 6 arrow shapes, 6 trails and 4 crash effects. There are also always three MISSIONS running, such as "Graze 50 times in one run" or "Reach a x4 multiplier", which pay extra Sparks and come back with bigger goals each time round.
Questions
How do I unlock the next world?
All six levels of a world are open at once, and the next world opens as soon as you clear any one level of the world before it.
How do I get the 30-graze star?
Following the middle of the tunnel gives very few grazes. You have to fly close to the walls on purpose, so it is easiest to finish a level first and then go back for it.
Can I play on a phone?
Yes. Hold a finger anywhere to climb and lift it to dive. Turn the phone sideways.
Does it save?
Yes, in your own browser: Sparks, best scores, stars, Daily results, ghosts, purchases and missions. Clearing your browser's site data clears the save.