Guide / Getting started
Getting started
The controls, what happens in your first few runs, and the three things you collect.
Controls
| Keyboard | Touch | |
|---|---|---|
| Move | ← → or A D | Hold ◀ or ▶, or slide a thumb between them |
| Jump | Space, ↑ or W | Tap ▲, or anywhere on the right half of the screen |
| Pause | Esc or P | The pause button in the corner |
Your Pixel stands still until you jump, so every jump is your choice. Two things make the timing kinder than it looks. A jump pressed a moment before you land still counts, so you can press early and take off the instant you touch down. And for a split second after running off a platform's edge you can still jump, as if the platform were a little wider than it is.
Hold jump instead of tapping and your Pixel jumps again every time it lands. Every Pixel can do it.
With a Double Jump power-up, or a Pixel that has AIR JUMP, pressing jump again in the air gives you a second one before you land.
The sides of the screen wrap. Run off the left edge and you come out on the right, which is often the shortest way to a platform on the far side.
Your first run
The menu is the first screen of your next run, so what you see behind the buttons is where you are about to start. Press PLAY and the run begins right there.
- Up to 30m: plain platforms and nothing else. This is the place to learn how far a jump carries.
- From 30m: yellow springs appear. One launches you about three platforms up.
- From 40m: the first drones fly in. Touching one costs a life.
- From 120m: cracked amber crumbling platforms. They break a moment after you land and come back about 2 seconds later. There are never two in a row.
- From 150m: some platforms slide from side to side.
The game calls out 100m, 250m, 500m and then every 500m as you pass them.
Score, height and bests
Your score is how high you climbed, in meters, and nothing else: no bonus adds to it. Your best height is your record, shown on the menu and as a gold line in the level until you pass it.
Hearts
A heart is a spare life. You can bank up to 3. When a fall or a hit would end your run, a heart is spent by itself instead: a red net bounces you back up from the bottom of the screen and you get a Hard Shield for the landing.
- Buy them in the shop's BOOSTERS tab for 150 gems each.
- Find them on platforms. They only appear while you have fewer than 3.
- Beat a boss and all 3 are refilled.
Hearts carry over between runs, so the ones you don't use today are still there tomorrow.
Gems
Gems are the game's money. About four platforms in ten carry one, and arcs of small gems trace the jump between two platforms (five small ones make a full gem). A gem is worth more the higher you find it: 5 in Atmosphere, 10 in Ionosphere, 15 in Low Orbit, 25 in Deep Space, 35 in The Rift, 50 in Neon Grid, 75 in Static Field, 100 in The Void.
Spend them on hearts and on the shop's Pixels. Because of how the values climb, one good run into the upper biomes pays more than an hour of short ones.
The daily run and your ghost
Solo runs use one layout per day, the same for every player in the world. That is what makes scores comparable, and why a friend can tell you where the nasty gap is.
After your first run of the day, a faded copy of your Pixel replays your previous attempt alongside you. It is the most useful teacher in the game: watch where the ghost went wrong and take the other way. You can hide it in Settings.
The Online and Personal leaderboards
Because everyone climbs the same layout, the game keeps an Online leaderboard of the day's three highest solo climbs, each shown with the Pixel that climbed it. If your run makes it, the run card asks for a name to put beside it. Records, on the menu, shows the board. It starts empty every day. Below it, your Personal leaderboard keeps your own three best climbs.
The board ranks the meters you actually climbed. Boss bonuses, double score and a head start from a Pixel's perk don't count, so every Pixel competes on the same terms. Each player holds one place a day, their best. Co-op runs aren't ranked.
Challenging a friend
At the end of a run, SHARE RUN makes a score card and a challenge link. Anyone who opens the link that day plays the same layout with a TARGET line drawn at your height.
Where your progress lives
Everything is saved in your browser on your device: bests, gems, hearts, Pixels, achievements and settings. There is no account. The one thing that leaves your device is an Online leaderboard entry, if you choose to post one: the name you type, the height you reached and the Pixel you climbed with. Clearing the site's data deletes your save, and a different browser or device starts fresh.
▶ PLAY PIXEL JUMP