The Icy Guide to Rink Runner

In Rink Runner you play an adorable Bruce. The aim of Rink Runner is to score as many points as you can, but at the same time, you need to avoid the cracks in the ice. A panel of three judges scores you. These judges can award you up to 10 points each so you can earn a total maximum of 30 points a round. These judges score you in two areas. The areas are: Number of Moves (Jumps) and Number of Notes. More detail will be included about the scoring later on in this guide.

To progress to the next round you need a certain amount of points. The amount of points you need to get increases as the rounds go on but more about that will also be covered later on in this guide Before you can start playing well there are a few things you need to know.

Each round 30 notes will appear on the game screen each round. These notes start black, then turn to green, then to blue, then to orange, then to red. After they turn red, they will disappear. As the rounds get harder, the notes will start on different colours so that each round you have a shorter amount of time before they disappear. For example, in round 1 the notes start on black but in round 2 they start on green. You basically get points for every note you earn, but the scoring is not as simple as that and you have to read further down this guide to know more about the scoring, but it is important that you get these notes or your score will be really low.

With notes come sharps and flats. Anyone who has musical talent would probably know what they look like but in case you don't a flat looks something like a "b" and a sharp looks like "# ". Like notes, these change colours from black to red. These take the number of notes you caught down but don't actually affect your score. You're probably thinking how does that work? Well, to find out you're going to have to keep reading, as it has something to do with the scoring.

The third and final thing I need to touch on before we can start the fun stuff is the number of jumps or what I like to call the number of moves. Every time you go from one place to another, it is counted as a move so basically every time you click your mouse it is counted as a move or a jump. You are allowed up to thirty moves or jumps in each round (except the first where it doesn't matter) and if you make more than thirty moves it stats counting against your score. You guessed it, to find out more about how it counts against your score, you are going to have to keep reading. As the rounds go on, the ice will split and move around. This can make the game quite difficult.

Now it is time to go into the specifics of the game. You should have now learnt the basics and it's time to go into more detail such as specific scoring. The 1st round is easy as you cannot fall into any cracks; you are not being judged on the number of moves you make and there are no minimum notes you need to get to progress, so basically it is guaranteed to proceed into the 2nd round. In this round the notes start black and turn red. The notes change colour around every three seconds so you have around 15 seconds to get each note. It's simple.

Now that we are past the basic 1st level, it is finally time to go into scoring. Every time you get a note, you get one base point. For every jump you make over 30 you lose one base point. Every time you get a flat or a sharp it takes your notes caught total down by 2 but this DOES NOT have any impact on your score. So for example if you caught 30 notes, one flat, one sharp, and made 30 jumps, it would say that you caught 26 notes and your score is 30. If you caught 30 notes and made 32 jumps it would say that you caught 30 notes and your score is 28. If you just counted the notes, you would have 30 points, but as you made 2 moves over 30 they take that 2 away from your score and that makes it 28. The game divides your score by 3 and gives the judges these numbers and they hold these numbers up but really the judges have no effect on the score; it's the scoring method above that holds your score. Now that you know about the scoring, the only thing that will stop you from success is the amount of moves that you make and the speed with which the notes disappear, which could possibly be faster than your hand can move.

I will now go through a few tips that should help in overcoming this barrier. First of all, there are 30 notes so you can afford to make one move for every note, so if you do this, you should have no problem with the number of moves you make. The problem is that it is easy to misplace where a note is, so it's not dumb to try and get more than one note at a time early in the round. In case this does happen, you may need to try and get more than one note later in the round, because you know you've taken more than one move to get a note. To try and get more than one note at a time, I suggest you try to wait till two notes are real close to each other and go for both of them at the same time. Then chances are likely that you will get both of them. When you do this, make sure you just keep looking a pair of notes. Make sure you are watching the other notes, because they are still changing colours and will disappear soon and then you will lose points. If a pair is not close together but on the same angle and you think you can get them both, go for it, but as I said before, make sure you watch the other notes. If another note turns red, make sure you get it.

The 2nd round is quite a bit more difficult than the 1st, as it applies the scoring method and you need at least 21 points to qualify for round 3, unlike the 1st round where there was no scoring method and you could get 0 points and still qualify. Even though the 2nd round is more difficult than the first round, it is still quite simple. The colour starts on green instead of black and each colour lasts for about 3 seconds, so you have approximately 12 seconds to get each note. It's not that difficult

In the 3rd round, you need 22 points to proceed to round 4. The notes start on blue, then go orange, then red, then disappear, and like the other rounds each colour lasts for 3 seconds, so you have around 9 seconds for each note before it goes away.

In the 4th round, a total of 23 points to qualify for round 5. The notes begin at blue like they did in the 3rd round. In this round you can really tell the ice is moving, so make sure that when you aim to move from one sheet of ice to the other, you are clicking so that you land a reasonable distance away from the water so that the risk of you landing on the water is not that high. You need to remember this for the rest of the levels.

In the 5th round, you need 24 points to move on. Once again they start on blue and last the same amount of time. The difficulty will start to get more difficult from here on and you cannot really afford to miss a note.

For the 6th round you need 25 points to go onto the 7th. In the 7th round, you need 26 points, and it keeps going up one point until you get to 30, then it will stay at 30. Around the 28th round the notes will start orange so you need to be really quick. If you see a note and you think you can get it and survive, do it because chances are that the opportunity that you'll get a chance at it again is low.

To be successful at Rink Runner, you need to remember something. The notes will disappear, so get them as quickly as you can or your score will suffer. You can only move 30 times until your score will suffer. You want to try and move onto the next round to have a chance of getting more points, therefore getting a higher score. Try and get 2 notes in one move as much as possible. Apart from that, if you do everything suggested in this guide, you have a reasonable chance at getting a high score, but just remember practice makes perfect.

I would like to thank black_wolve0 who edited this guide and corrected all grammar errors there were. If you have any questions or comments please neomail me.