Rushmark

Rushmark is about one droid, one dash and a racing line drawn straight through the enemies. A learned run takes under thirty seconds. A failed one restarts instantly, and you will fail a lot.

ONE DASH. NO SECOND CHANCES.

Five moves, all on one hand: run, jump, eight-way dash, wall kick, area burst. No moves to unlock, no upgrades. The depth is in how they combine at speed.

The dash is your fastest move and your weapon. On the ground it's back in under a second. In the air you get one, and once it's spent, waiting won't bring it back. Killing will: kill with it and it refunds instantly, cooldown and all, so a line of enemies becomes a ladder across a gap with no floor.

That makes enemies geometry, not rooms to clear. Blockers sit on the fast line, ranged units make you commit early, and armoured anchors under low ceilings only open to an area burst.

SEASON ONE: TEN COURSES, TEN DIFFERENT IDEAS

Each course is built around something the last one didn't do: a wall-kick gauntlet you cross without touching the ground, a course that descends instead of climbing, one played almost entirely in the air. Rated one to three stars, so you know what you're walking into.

Season two is already finished and inside the game behind a locked card: five more courses and two more Marathons, out in December. When a season closes, the ladder resets.

No health bar, no lives. Touch a hazard and the droid disintegrates on the spot. Enemy fire knocks you off your line, which usually amounts to the same thing. Restarting takes no fade, no menu and no confirmation; you're moving again before you've finished being annoyed.

THREE WAYS TO RUN THE CIRCUIT

• Courses: ten fixed tracks, with marker splits that show exactly where the time went.

• Survival: an endless chain drawn from forty hand-built sections, and the world speeds up the longer you last.

• Marathons: courses 1-5, 6-10 or all ten back to back, with a halfway checkpoint the clock doesn't forgive you for needing.

EVERYONE ELSE IS ALREADY ON THE BOARD

Every personal best goes on the board the moment you set it. Each course, each Marathon and Survival has its own Steam leaderboard, and a season ranking scores you across all of them, so a rival taking one course off you costs you season position.

Pull any entry off a board and race that player's recorded run, or watch it wearing the skin and trail they had on. Beat your own ghost first. Then find someone worth chasing.

Season standing pays out in skins and nothing else, never a gameplay advantage. Play before 3 November and the launch-week FIRST HEAT skin is yours for good.

THE CIRCUIT

The underworld runs a betting operation, and you're the stock it runs on: a pilot neural-linked to a combat droid, racing rigged courses staged for people betting on whether you make it. That's all the story there is. The game would rather you were already running.

IN THE BOX

• Ten timed courses, endless Survival and three Marathons

• A tutorial that teaches every technique by making you do it

• Practice mode: respawn at the start of the section you died in and drill just that part

• Personal-best ghosts, marker splits, best time and best score per course

• Steam leaderboards, downloadable rival ghosts, a season ranking, achievements and Cloud saves

• Skins earned by season rank, trails earned by beating par times

• Full controller support and fully rebindable keys

• A built-in music player: swap playlists, build your own, skip a track mid-run