HurdleStepMahjong

A synthetic track, ten hurdles, and every crossbar is a mahjong tile lying face-up across the uprights. You sprint 110 metres, you clear ten bars, and you take a tile off each bar you get over cleanly. The athletics half decides how fast you go; the mahjong half decides how easy the rest of the race gets

The whole game is a rhythm. Between one bar and the next you get exactly three steps: STEP, STEP, JUMP. The cadence strip above the controls shows which beat is due and how long you have; a playhead sweeps toward the pad that is armed. Land a foot inside the beat window and you hold your speed. Land it outside and you scrub a little. Miss the beat completely and you lose more.

The third beat is the takeoff. Where you leave the ground matters more than anything else in the race: the takeoff gauge shows your distance to the bar and a green band marks the good window, roughly 1.8 to 2.4 metres out. Too close and the lead leg has nowhere to go. Too far and you float, which costs even more. Get it inside the band and you come off the bar with no loss at all.