Rope Swing

Rope Swing is a one-button swinging game set in miniature 2.5D dioramas of bamboo groves, lantern rivers and misty mountain shrines. You play a small clay ninja who crosses each course by shooting a rope at the glowing peg ahead, swinging underneath it and letting go to fly to the next one. Reach the shrine at the end of the course and ring the gong to finish.

Hold to grab the peg, release to let go. While you hang on, the rope reels in, so every swing gets faster the longer you hold. Letting go on the way up sends you furthest, and clean upswing releases chain together into a "Nice" streak that pays an extra coin each time. Miss a peg and you drop into the mist, the river or whatever lies below, and you can try the course again.

The campaign has 120 courses in eight worlds of fifteen. Each world adds one new thing to handle: sliding pegs on rails over the Lantern River, wind and cracking pegs in the Windy Peaks, still and patrolling spike balls in Thorn Canyon, bounce clouds in the Cloud Temple, portal pairs in the Moon Shrine, turning pegs and fire jets in the Ember Forge, and the Storm Summit, which mixes everything. The fifteenth course of each world is a long challenge that uses all of that world's mechanics and pays double coins. Every course was played through by a planning bot that runs the game's own physics, so each one can be finished.

A few things worth knowing. Coins sit along the safe line, but the three stars hide off it, at the top of braver arcs that need a later release. Cracked pegs creak before they snap, so do not hang around on them. Sliding pegs are easiest to grab as they come toward you. On turning pegs, let go at the top of the turn, and time your swings past fire jets between bursts. In the Cloud Temple, dropping onto a cloud bounces you high, and in the Moon Shrine, flying into the orange portal brings you out of the blue one with your speed intact.

Coins buy twelve ninja outfits and eight rope trails, and Endless mode, which opens after level 3, strings together stretches from every world you have reached for one long run measured in metres. Your progress and stars are saved, so you can come back to any course for the stars you missed. It is easy to pick up with a mouse, the keyboard or a single finger on a phone, in either orientation.

In each course your goal is to reach the shrine. Every course hides three stars off the easy line, and only the braver arcs reach them. Coins from your runs buy new ninjas and rope trails in the shop.

Endless mode strings together every world you have opened into one long run, and you see how far you can get.