Meteor Run

Meteor Run has one control. Put a finger anywhere on the screen and the ship follows it. Lift the finger and the ship holds the line it was on — it does not drift and it does not snap back. That is the whole of it.

Rocks fall towards you, and the field fills up as you go. One rock a second at the start; two by two hundred metres, three by five hundred, and by then one rock in five is a big one. The curve eases off the whole way and never spikes, so how far you get is decided by how you fly rather than by when the wall arrives.

Between the rocks there are energy cells, and three powers that drop rarely.

A cyan orb raises a shield. It holds for five seconds, or until it eats one rock, whichever comes first.

An amber orb turns on a magnet for eight seconds and cells come to you instead of the other way round.

A green orb slows the world to under half speed and leaves your ship alone. Your handling stays exactly as it was while everything else crawls, which is what makes it a power rather than lag.

Each one drains a bar in its own colour at the top of the screen, so you always know which is running and how much is left.

Cells are spent in the hangar, and the hangar is the second half of the game.

Three ships. The Scout is free, the fastest and the thinnest, and has three hull points — it is the one you learn on. The Fighter costs 220 cells: slower, wider, one more hull point. The Hauler costs 600: slowest of the three and the widest target, with five. These are not sidegrades. Hull is what keeps you in the air, so each ship is plainly better than the one before it.

Five upgrades, three levels each. Hull adds hull points, and it moves how far you get more than anything else in the tree. Launch shield starts every run with the shield already up. Shield charge makes both the shield and slow-motion last longer. Magnet range pulls cells in from more than twice as far. Cell yield makes every cell worth more at every level of it. The whole tree and both ships together come to 5,670 cells, so there is an end to it.

The playfield has a fixed size in its own units and is letterboxed to whatever screen it is on. A phone and a tablet therefore play the same game — no device gets extra room to dodge in, and no score is device-dependent.

Distance is the score, in metres. The ship visibly takes damage as its hull drops. There is a pause button, and three languages: English, Russian and Ukrainian.

Meteor Run works entirely offline. No account and no sign-in, no ads, no in-app purchases, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising ID. The game makes no network requests at all. The one thing it keeps is a single entry on your own device: your language, your vibration setting, your cells, the ships and upgrades you own, and your records. Settings has a button that erases it, and uninstalling removes it as well.