Race The Sun

About Race The Sun

Race the Sun was released on Steam in December 2013 by Flippfly, the studio that also made Absolute Drift and Whisker Squadron. You fly a solar-powered craft that only moves while the sun is up. The sun sinks steadily toward the horizon, shadows from buildings and clouds slow you down, and the only way to buy more time is to fly through boosts that push the sun back up. The run ends when you crash or the sun goes down, and your score depends on distance and on a multiplier you build by collecting blue triangles called Tris.

What makes it a daily game is the world. Every 24 hours it is rebuilt by shuffling its regions into a new order, and the in-game menu shows a countdown to the next reset. Everyone flies through the same world on a given day, and each day's world has its own leaderboard. You cannot go back to an earlier day's world, so a strong score has to be set before the countdown runs out.

Unlike most daily runs, you can retry as many times as you like. Runs are short, often only a few minutes, so the day becomes a series of attempts in which you learn where the boosts are and which paths through each region stay in the light. Not every route plays the same even within one day, because you can steer into different parts of a region. Between dailies there are objectives that level up your craft to unlock jumps, portals and upgrades, a harder Apocalypse world, and community-made worlds.

The game suits players who like short arcade sessions and a high score to chase. It is also on PlayStation 4, and the free Challenge Edition on iOS and Android has its own daily challenge system.

How to play Race The Sun

1. Start Race the Sun and check the world reset countdown in the menu to see how long today's world lasts.
2. Start a run and steer left and right to dodge obstacles; later levels add jumps you can trigger with the jump button.
3. Fly through boosts to push the sun back up, and avoid long stretches of shadow, which slow you down.
4. Collect Tris to raise your score multiplier, and do not hit obstacles, which cost speed and multiplier.
5. When the run ends, check your place on today's leaderboard and try again; you can race the same world until it resets.

Screenshots

Tips

• Spend your first few runs of the day learning where the boosts sit in each region; the layout stays put until the reset.
• Shadows matter more as the sun gets low, so pick open paths late in a run.
• A light bump does not end the run but costs speed and some multiplier, so give obstacles a wide berth.
• Finish the level objectives to unlock the Battery and Magnet upgrades, which make longer daily runs easier.
• Set your top score before the countdown ends; old worlds cannot be replayed.

Questions