The idea

Walk the block and dodge everyone. The closer you skim past someone without touching, the more points you score.

Your bars

• Lives: how many bumps you can take. Run out and the walk is over.
• Combo: near-misses in a row. The higher it climbs, the more every dodge is worth.
• Patience: spent by slow-walking (hold ↓ / Shold a swipe downwardhold LT). It refills as you keep moving, and Coffee tops it right up.

Scoring big

Build a combo with near-misses, then press Etap a second fingerpress LB to sell your streak for a pile of points, before a bump takes it all away.

The Edition: filing what you walked through

There is a second way to keep score, and you choose it before you set off: MODE, further up this screen, next to the difficulty. It swaps points for column inches. You are not surviving a commute any more. You are filing a story about one.

Everything you already do writes copy. A brush past somebody is an inch of filler. A razor dodge is two. An insane one is the photograph, and pays four. A species you have never seen before is a twelve-inch piece; a manoeuvre is eight, on the grounds that a two-verb sentence is a set-piece by construction; and surviving a whole event is fifteen and a byline you will be unbearable about.

None of it counts until you file it. Until then it sits in the notebook on the top rail, growing, and entirely at risk.

Every block, the desk calls. A six-second window opens under your feet with the offer on it, and pressing Etapping a second fingerpressing LB files. The notebook empties into the bank at whatever edition you have climbed to, and banked copy is untouchable for the rest of the walk. It is the same key that sells a streak, because it is the same idea: bank what you are holding.

Or do nothing whatsoever. The window closes on its own and the entire notebook rides one rung higher: x1.5, x2, x3, x5, x8, x12, and it does not stop there. That is the shape of the mode: the greedy choice is the one you make by not moving a finger, and the careful one costs a deliberate press while a crowd is coming at you. The prompt tells you both halves. What filing pays now, and what the clock buys if you let it run out.

And then somebody walks into you, and the story is spiked: every unfiled inch gone, the edition back to x1. What you banked is safe, and that is the only reason pushing is a decision rather than a coin toss on the whole walk. The paper will mention it in the morning. The paper mentions everything.

When the sidewalk closes in

Press FTap a third fingerPress Y to shout "HEY!", and the crowd ahead jumps for the curbs. It burns a chunk of Patience and needs a breather between yells, so save it for real trouble. Fair warning: anyone glued to a phone won't hear you, and the mime will not dignify it.

Walk into somebody and you have about a second to say sorry: the same Xthe same chip, now reading SORRY!the same RB, because you can hardly ask a stranger to move while you are apologising to the one you just flattened. A gold bar shows the clock: press it while it is still gold and the city hears a real apology, press it grey and it hears a man who had a think about it first. You do not get the life back. You never get the life back. But the person you hit will have something to say either way. There are eight kinds of answer out there, and the Field Guide lists which one each species gives. Some of them are genuinely lovely about it, and being forgiven hands you back a little Patience, which is the closest this city comes to a hug.

For just one person in your way, press Xtap the PARDON chippress RB to say excuse me. Cheaper, quicker, and most people politely step aside. Tourists stop dead to apologize, which is worse. The mime holds the door to a room that isn't there.

Pointing at nothing

Press B while you lean left or rightTap the LOOK! chip while the stick leans left or rightFlick the right stick up while you steer and throw an arm out at something over there. Everyone who can see it looks, and drifts a lane and a half the way you pointed, craning as they go, which slows the whole clot down. There is nothing over there. Nobody checks. Nobody falls for it twice, either: a person who has already fallen for it once will watch you do it again and carry on walking.

Point with no direction held and the street stops to look up instead: nobody steps aside, but nobody gets anywhere either, and some days that is the better trade. And the people it works on are not the people the shout works on: the delivery robot has no ears and an excellent camera, and the mime is deaf by profession and would not miss a gesture for the world.

When your patience is gone

Press CTap the PHONE chipClick a stick to check your phone. Patience comes back four times faster while you scroll, and the price is exactly what you would guess: you dodge like someone who is on their phone. No sprinting, no slow-walking, and the feet wander a little on their own. Putting it away takes a quarter of a second, which is a very long time when it matters. Nobody on this pavement will judge you for it. Everybody on this pavement is doing it.

Turning sideways

When the gap is nearly wide enough, do what everyone does: hold Vhold the TURN chippush the right stick sideways and turn your shoulders. You genuinely get narrower. A third narrower, because that is what a person is, and gaps that would have flattened you let you through.

It costs nothing at all. It just costs everything else: while you are edge-on you cannot change lanes. Pick your gap, commit, and thread it. And turn early, because halfway round you are briefly wider than you were standing still, which is exactly as awkward as it sounds, and exactly what happens on a real pavement.

Putting two of them together

Anyone can press two buttons. A manoeuvre is when the second one follows from the first. Shout the whole block out of your way, then ask one of the people you just shouted at very politely, and the city files it as THE MANAGEMENT STYLE. Point until the crowd actually drifts, then turn sideways through the gap you opened, and that is THE DECOY.

There are seven, they pay a few hundred each on top of everything else, and THE REPERTOIRE further down this screen lists all seven with instructions. Pull one and it swaps the instructions for its name and a short note on the kind of person you have just been.

Power-ups: grab them as they float by