SOLDIER
SURFER

How to play Soldier Surfer

You steer a crowd of soldiers down an endless track. Gates stretch across the road in pairs: a green one adds to the army (+N, ×2, ×3, ×5) and a red one takes from it (−N, ÷2, ÷3). Pick the better gate, run through it, and the crowd changes size on the spot. There is no finish line and no timer: the run ends when the army reaches zero.

Between the gates the road throws obstacles at you (blades, spikes, hammers and blocks) and enemy squads that shoot back while your soldiers return fire on their own. Coins line the track, weapon pods swap the whole army’s gun (minigun, shotgun, laser or rockets) for twelve to fourteen seconds, and past certain distances a boss arrives with a health bar.

Controls

• Keyboard: ← → or A / D to steer.
• Touch: drag anywhere on screen to steer. Tilt steering is optional and toggles on this screen.
• Difficulty, sound and the power-up store are on the start screen; Play begins a run.

Difficulty, the army, and how far you get

The three difficulty levels change the shape of a whole run rather than one number. On Hard the gate pairs come closer together (19–29 m apart against 25–40 m), the chance of a red gate ramps from 30% to 68%, red/red pairs (where both gates cost you and the only question is which costs less) unlock at 350 m, obstacle gaps shrink, and hostile events fire far more often: bosses from 420 m instead of 600 m, war zones from 320 m, with meteor showers and ambushes stacked in between. Easy moves every one of those the other way.

The army merges as it grows. The first ninety soldiers are always drawn one by one; everything above that fuses instead (twenty-five to a bronze Brute, two hundred and fifty to a gold Titan) so the count keeps climbing long after the screen has run out of room to draw individuals. ×5 gates only appear after 600 m and ÷3 gates after 800 m, so the swings get bigger the further you get. Your best distance is drawn as a golden line on the road at the exact metre you reached, and it is stored in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.

Questions

Is Soldier Surfer free?

Yes, completely. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, no account and no sign-up. The game is WebGL running in the page, on desktop or phone.

What is a crowd runner game?

A crowd runner is an endless runner where you steer a group rather than a single character, and gates across the track multiply or subtract from that group as you pass through them. Soldier Surfer is that genre: an endless 3D track, math gates that scale the army, and a run that lasts exactly as long as the crowd does.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Drag anywhere on screen to steer, and optional tilt steering can be switched on from the start screen. It runs in the mobile browser with nothing to install.

How do I get further?

A green +N gate gives you a percentage of the army you already have (20 to 80 per cent of it) so a ×2 beside it is always the better half of that pair, and the choice worth thinking about is a red one: weigh the printed −N against half your crowd before you take a ÷2. Keep the green-gate streak alive, because it multiplies every coin you pick up, up to three times over: and treat obstacles as cheaper than a red gate: no single obstacle takes more than about a third of the crowd, while a ÷2 takes half.

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