Pixel Rugby vs Snowlore

Retro arcade rugby you play with one thumb. Your five players run up the pitch across five lanes. Pass to the lane above or below to get round defenders, then dive over the line to score. You attack, the computer defends, and the other side's possessions are simulated, so a full match takes about five minutes. Easy to learn, with plenty to dig into: 100 nations, world rankings your results really move, a 20-club career and eleven tournaments. IPHONE, IPAD, APPLE TV AND MAC One purchase covers all four, with your save synced between them. On Apple TV you play with the Siri Remote, and on Mac with the keyboard or trackpad. Apple Watch gets its own Endless Runner, free for everyone, passing with the Digital Crown. FOUR WAYS TO PLAY Endless Runner: One sprint, three hearts, and a tougher nation every 100 metres until only the world number one is left. Distance is your score, with a top-200 board kept on your device. Quick Match: Two nations, one short match. Play it as a ranked Test that moves the world rankings, or as a friendly that changes nothing. Hold the button instead of tapping it for a surprise fixture, always away from home. Tournaments: Eleven competitions: the Global Cup, the North and South Nations, and eight more cups. Who qualifies comes from your own world rankings, so a nation you build up can reach a cup it couldn't before. The Global Cup takes the best of each region plus five wildcards, so every continent is always there. Career: Twenty clubs in two divisions, with promotion and relegation. It saves after every match, so a season works fine in short sittings. Before a season starts you can choose standard bonus points or the French system, where the attacking bonus needs three more tries than the other side instead of four in total. MATCH DAY ON TV Big matches open with TV pundits previewing the game and end with a TV interview with your captain. Other career matches get a video podcast: a preview before kickoff or a recap after. After the final whistle your supporters' group chat reacts, and a newspaper covers the round. You can turn each of these off in Settings > Atmosphere. ALSO IN THE GAME • Pixel art, an optional CRT filter and a chiptune soundtrack. • Weather that changes how a match plays. • Anthems and war dances before kickoff. • Your own squad: name your players, choose their looks and earn them stars in Training. • Haptics on iPhone, so you feel the tackles and the scrums. • Two kits for every nation and three for every club. • Crowds that grow or shrink with who is playing and where. Fully playable in English, French and Spanish. FREE AND PRO Free: the Endless Runner, Quick Match friendlies, the first three rounds of a career, and two complete tournaments. One purchase unlocks the rest for good: ranked Tests, every tournament, the full career and save sync across your devices. No subscription. It covers iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac. NO ACCOUNTS, NO ADS, NO TRACKING Nothing to sign up for and no ads. The game sends anonymous gameplay stats with nothing that identifies you, and you can turn them off in Settings > General > Anonymous Stats. Your save stays on your device, and syncs through your own iCloud only if you turn it on.

Ski down a mountain. Tilt your phone to steer, tap to jump, and try not to hit anything. Snowlore is a remake of a small game I made in 2010, rebuilt from nothing with the one feature the original never got: animals crossing the slope in front of you. A hare bolts. A deer stops dead and stares. A bear does not hurry for anyone. FORTY-TWO COURSES, SEVEN MOUNTAINS Work up a branching map from the nursery slope to the summit, and then on to the next mountain: the Himalaya, Fuji, Triglav, Jotunheimen, Aconcagua, Hekla, Kilimanjaro. Each course is the same every time you ski it, so a better line is something you can learn rather than something you are given. Stars come from your time, the energy you have left, and how close you dared to pass. A PAGE OF LORE FOR EVERY COURSE Finish one and it gives you something back: a short tale about the place, and underneath it one thing that is true. Why a deer freezes instead of running. What a whiteout actually does to your eyes. Where the word "abominable" came from, and the mistranslation behind it. ENDLESS No finish line. It keeps getting harder for as long as you last, and past a point something starts following you down — and once you have beaten the creatures of the seven mountains, it is not always the same one. HONEST ABOUT ITSELF No advertising. No in-app purchases. No analytics. The developer receives nothing about you at all. Your scores go to Apple Game Center so they can be ranked — to Apple, never to the developer — and everything else stays on your phone. It is free because it was made for the pleasure of making it, and there is nothing in it to buy. Plays in twelve languages, with tilt or touch controls.