The bet

A small game that runs on the phone you already have. Around 32 MB. Portrait. One thumb, and no tutorial, because there is nothing to read: the loot is at the top, your bank is at the bottom, and the things flying about in the middle want the loot back. DRAG. COLLECT. GO HOME. Put your thumb on the screen and the creature follows it. Anything it touches sticks to its tail. Take the tail across the line at the bottom and the whole thing turns into coin at once. Then go up and do it again, deeper, with more of them chasing you. WHY IT IS THIS SMALL Everything on screen is drawn rather than downloaded. No cutscenes, no voice packs, no thirty-megabyte splash video. It starts fast and it stays smooth on old hardware. Runs are two or three minutes. It fits in a queue, a bus stop, a lift. WHAT MAKES IT HARD A full tail is a slow tail. Carrying more pays more and steers worse, and the loot rots while you hold it, so the trip home has a clock on it. Jets patrol the middle of the field. Each one draws the exact circle it can see you inside, so you can read the whole board before you commit. Touch one with your tail and the tail snaps. Meet one head on and the haul is gone. Stand around doing nothing and a plague comes down from the top and eats the loot before you can get to it. IT DOES NOT RUN OUT Coin upgrades last one run. Cores are permanent, and the track you spend them on keeps going long after you stop. Ten level twists rotate through — more jets, bigger loot, fog, a rush, a quiet one — so the field keeps changing shape. Four pickups do the loud things: pull everything to you, shove every jet away, freeze them where they stand, push the plague back. Nothing tells you which is which. You find out by grabbing one. Small game. Long game.