Hold the record and the whole level stops.

You never touch the runner

He runs right at one speed, on the clock on your wall. Outside the coach's lessons, you can't stop him, slow him or make him jump. Everything else lives on the record: the crushers, the speakers, the trapdoors, the lasers, the mirrorballs and the music. All of it plays from one clock, the record's position, and that clock is in your hand.

Hold anywhere and the record stops. A crusher halfway through its slam hangs there. The music winds down with it, because the game plays its loop at wherever the record actually is. Let go and the motor spins back up to speed in about a third of a second.

A second later, he stops at a speaker that's firing records at him

Pink discs come flat out of the cone at chest height, one on every beat, and this time the coach says DRAG LEFT to scratch it back before it woke up. So you drag left. Every disc in the air turns around and flies back into the speaker, the beat plays backwards under your hand, and the speaker goes quiet because it hasn't switched on yet. Then you hold, and he jogs past it. That's track one.

The game's own bot does something stranger. It plays the record backwards at about normal speed, so the discs fly away from him, home into the speaker, and he runs along between them.

Drag about an eighth of the game's width and you've moved the record one second. Fling it as hard as you like: it tops out at four times normal speed, either way.

No single move gets you through

The game's own test checks this on every track. Four hands play each one: a hand that never touches the record, a hand that holds it the whole way, a hand that keeps rewinding and a hand that keeps pushing. None of them finishes a single track. I let each one die ten times on all eight. That's 320 lives, and not one reached the finish.

Because he moves through distance and you move through time, each track is really a maze drawn on those two axes. Every hazard is a wall in it, and your hand draws the line. When you finish, the results card shows you that line. It's your groove, drawn against a dotted line for what hands off would have done. Then it plays the last twelve seconds of your run back as music: ♪ PLAYING YOUR MIX.

What's in the crate

Eight tracks. Side A adds a new hazard on most tracks, then A6 throws all of them at you. Side B flips the record over and plays it backwards, so letting go rewinds the world, and to get anywhere you have to push. Each track opens once you've cleared the one before it.

Running time is the kid running flat out with nothing in the way. Run the whole crate clean and it's about two and a half minutes. Your retries are the rest of it.

Dying costs you under two seconds

There's no game over. When something gets him, the record does a quick backspin, and he's back at the last flag after 0.6 seconds. Then there's a two-beat count-in, about a second. He waits through it, but the record doesn't, so you can already be scratching when he starts. Press R and the track starts again right away.

The medals are records, and they're about how clean the run was. Get there and it's CLEARED. Two deaths or fewer is SILVER, and none at all is GOLD. PLATINUM is gold plus the track's quota of close shaves: pass one hair from a hazard and live, and you'll see CLOSE!

Miss platinum and the card tells you how close you were, like no deaths for GOLD or 2 more close shaves for PLATINUM. Make it and the card says pressed in platinum.

Plain facts

What does it cost?

Nothing. No account, no ads, nothing to buy. It's one of the games I build for the Play Moehr Games arcade.

Does it work on my phone?

Yes. Hold and drag with your thumb anywhere on the record. Turn the phone sideways for a bigger one, or use the full-screen link.

Can I use the keyboard?

Yes. Hold Space or ↓ to stop the record. Hold ← to scratch back or → to push forward, both at two and a half times speed. R restarts the track, and Esc opens the crate.

Is this Braid?

Braid's World 4, Time and Place, ties time to your feet: walk right and time runs forward, walk left and it runs back. Here you never steer the runner at all. He runs on real time, and your hand only moves the record.

What's the music?

All of it is made by the game in your browser. There are no recordings. The loop plays at the record's real position and speed, so a hold winds it down and a drag scratches it. When you scratch back past something, its sound plays reversed.

Does it save?

Your best medal on each track saves in this browser. Clear your browser data and it's gone.

Who has played it?

So far, only bots. Every track has been solved by the game's own solver and cleared by its bot with zero deaths, and an automated playtest checks the start, the controls and the first track. You'd be one of the first people to play it by hand.