About Goblin Escape
The torch is three things at once
It is your safety, because goblins inside its radius turn and run out of it by the shortest route. It is your clock, because it burns down continuously and there is no way to stop it. And it is your multiplier, because treasure picked up inside torchlight pays double.
That triple duty is what makes every decision here a real one. Standing in the light is safe and scores well and burns the thing keeping you safe.
The torch can also be thrown. It lands ahead of your direction of travel and keeps burning where it falls, which plants a fixed safe circle and buys you a corridor through a crowd - at the cost of the light you were standing in.
Goblins are faster than you, on purpose
A goblin moves at 272 to 340 pixels a second against your 258. You cannot outrun them in a straight line, ever, and that is the design rather than a mistake.
What you can do is use the trees. Goblins do not path around anything - they come straight at you, and a goblin that clips a trunk is stunned for just over half a second. Stringing a crowd through a stand of trees is what turns six pursuers into a line of one.
The wood is laid out on a jittered grid rather than at random, so there are always lanes through it. Pure random placement produces both impassable clumps and useless empty halves, and neither is a wood worth running through.
Running out of light
When the torch burns out the run does not end - it simply gets much worse. The darkness closes, there is no safe ground anywhere, and the goblins have nothing to stop them.
That is a better punishment than a loss, because the player gets to feel it happening and has a chance to do something about it. A relight appears somewhere on the map whenever the torch drops below a third, always at a distance, so getting the light back is a run across open ground with everything chasing.
The relight is the most dangerous thirty seconds in the game and also the only way out of the worst situation it can produce.
How to play
- Press Space, Enter or tap to start. You begin carrying a lit torch.
- Move with WASD, the arrows, or by dragging anywhere.
- Goblins will not enter torchlight. Treasure collected in the light is worth double.
- Press Space to throw the torch ahead of you - it keeps burning where it lands.
- Clip goblins on trees. They do not path around anything and lose half a second.
- When the torch drops below a third, a relight appears. Reaching it is a risk worth taking.
Controls
| Where | What to do |
|---|---|
| Keyboard - move | WASD or the arrow keys |
| Keyboard - throw torch | Space or J |
| Keyboard - pause | Escape or P |
| Touch - move | Drag anywhere away from the runner |
| Touch - throw | Tap near the runner, or the Cast button |
Scoring
These are the point values this game awards, before the combo multiplier is applied where it uses one. Hit quality changes the figure: a strike at the centre of the correct moment is worth substantially more than one at the edge of it.
Tips
- You cannot outrun a goblin in the open. Every escape route should include trees.
- A thrown torch plants a safe circle. Throw it where you are going, not where you are.
- Collect inside the light whenever the detour is small - everything is worth double there.
- Goblins that clip a trunk lose half a second. Lead them into the grid, not around it.
- Go for the relight before the torch is out, not after. Crossing open ground in the dark is worse.
- Throwing the torch leaves you unlit. Do it to escape, not to score.
Common mistakes
- Running in a straight line, which a goblin wins every time.
- Throwing the torch early and then having no light to collect in.
- Ignoring the relight until the torch has already gone out.
- Circling a single tree, which stuns one goblin and lets five others arrive.
- Standing in the light to feel safe while it burns down.
Features
- Torchlight that repels goblins, doubles treasure value and burns down as a clock.
- A throwable torch that plants a fixed safe circle where it lands.
- Goblins faster than the player, with no pathfinding, that stun on trees.
- A wood laid out on a jittered grid so there are always lanes through it.
- Darkness rendered as a single composite pass with light punched out of it.
- Personal best survival time and treasure count stored locally.
