Keeping your momentum up is also crucial to avoiding the mountain elders who occasionally chase you, as they can knock you out and end your session just as swiftly as crashing into rocks, hitting the ground when not upright, or falling into a chasm. Getting a good combo gives you momentum, which grants you the boost in speed needed to break rocks and jump over the vast chasms scattered across the mountain. Jumping is very important, since it allows you to jump onto rails, over rocks and fireplaces (and onto them if you time it right), and is used to tie these various tricks together to create combos. However, this isn’t automatic, so you’ll have to consider whether you have enough time to backflip before you hit the ground. That’s why it’s worth celebrating games like Alto’s Adventure, a collaboration between UK artist Harry Nesbitt and Toronto-based developer Snowman that features elegantly simple gameplay that anyone can enjoy.Īlto’s Adventure has you snowboarding down an endless mountain, where all you can do is jump by tapping the screen and perform a backflip by holding the screen mid-jump. However, too many of them suffer from overly complicated controls and mechanics for touchscreen devices that result in unintuitive experiences full of cheap deaths. The simple concept of running through an endless randomly generated level full of obstacles and collectibles for as long as possible resulted in many games, both from independent studios and big-name companies. If there’s any genre that was defined by the mobile gaming boom of the late 00s/early 10s, it’s the endless runner.

Alto's adventure archway wingsuit