Dig a little deeper into the snow, however, and it’s possible to unearth canny qualities that are designed to extend the game’s run beyond that of its peers. Like all endless runners, timing is the be all and end all in Alto’s Adventure, the leagues that have gone before. Airborne tricks, meanwhile, which help build up your pace after a successful landing, are a case of holding your finger down long enough to pull off a 360 degree loop, making sure your feet tally up with the land below when gravity pulls you back down. A tap of the screen will help you clear a small rock formation, for instance, but if you want to grind along a line of bunting, or clear a giant chasm in your path (handily marked with warning signs), a more sturdy and well-timed prod of the screen is required. There are, of course, different kinds of jumps on offer. Gravity takes care of your momentum – the game nicely fusing its title screen with the opening of play, Alto grabbing his board and flying off as the llamas make a run for it with your first tap of the screen – meaning all you have to do is jump. This endless runner is all about speed, timing and survival, and while gaining on a pack of llamas on the side of a snow laden mountain may be a fresh concept, the staples Alto’s Adventure is built upon have arguably been around since Canabalt.Īs in all endless runners, your methods of interaction are actually kept fairly limited. Or, if you’re particularly unlucky, crashing directly into a rock face.īut while the heavy signposting in Alto’s Adventure’s initial run isn’t lying – picking up llamas does indeed win you points – chasing them down is actually something of a side show. It’s these aforementioned llamas that, at least on the surface, act as your motivation throughout play – their escape from your precariously placed camp at the top of a mountain range causing you to mount your snowboard and set off in pursuit, triggering a fast-paced adventure that can ultimately only end up with you landing face first in a pile of snow. “Llamas equal points!” bellows the tutorial stage of Alto’s Adventure, uttering a sentence that has surely never made it into a video game before.

Hover over a rock alto's adventure