Holebound

The idea You are a hole. Swallow anything smaller than you to grow and score; hit the level’s point goal before the clock runs out. Level 1 is a gentle warm-up; from level 2 to 250 every level asks a little more, with a boss every 25th level; level 251 is the endless Graveyard.

Controls On a touchscreen, drag anywhere: the hole moves the way you drag, faster the farther you pull, so your thumb can stay at the bottom of the screen. Prefer steering toward your finger? Pick Tap to move in the pause menu or Options. On a keyboard use the arrow keys or WASD; Esc or P pauses. The game pauses itself when you switch away. In the Android app the back button pauses a level, resumes it, or steps back one screen, and the pause menu has a Vibration switch for the short buzz on swallows, bombs and bites.

Growing Each swallow grows you by a share of what you ate, so big things grow you fastest. On later levels a large hole grows more slowly, and no hole grows past the size tagged MAX. Things too big to eat block you; if you stay wedged against one for a moment it shoves aside. When a map runs low on food it restocks itself with things sized to your hole.

Score and the goal Every object has a face value; the combo multiplier (below) multiplies it. The goal is a rate: it rises from 30 points a second at level 2 to 150 at level 250, while the clock shrinks from 60 to 40 seconds, so the goal at level 150 is about 4,900 points in 48 seconds. The map holds most of the goal and restocks itself as you eat, so there is always enough food to reach it.

Combos Keep swallowing without a pause and every 3 in a row raises your multiplier: x2, x3, up to x5 (x6 with the Full Throttle perk). The chain tightens gradually through the middle of the game: by level 180 a step takes 4 swallows, the pause allowed between swallows is 1 second instead of 1.4, and crumbs under about a sixth of your size keep the chain alive without raising it. Example: at level 150, sixteen swallows in a row put you at x5, and a 40-point crate is then worth 200. A hard bump into something too big, a bomb, or a bite in the Graveyard breaks the chain.

Power-ups Glowing rings, which any size hole can take: Speed (move 70% faster), Magnet (pulls edible things, bombs included, from two and a half hole-widths away while you are small, shrinking to 1.3 hole-widths at MAX, and nothing it pulls in steps your chain), Freeze (stops creatures, vehicles, rivals, the horde and the clock), Growth (+10 size at once). Rings appear less often and their effects run shorter as the levels climb.

Hazards Bombs (black, lit fuse; dynamite in the Construction world) shrink you and break your combo; the first appears on level 3, and the shrink grows from 9% then to 15% by level 100. Oil slicks make you skid and slow; the first is on level 6, and they slow you more as the levels go on, down to 45% of your speed by level 100. Ice (Snowy Village) makes you slide instead. Bombs shrink and stun rivals too, and oil slows them, and for a moment after a bomb shrinks you no rival can swallow you. From level 201 some bombs sit right beside the most valuable things on the map and some slicks lie on the lanes between them, so read the ground before you commit. Boss arenas and the Graveyard use the full-strength hazards. From level 51 every standard level also has a megabomb: once you reach three quarters of the goal, one big red bomb drops somewhere on the map, never under you. Touching it with your rim sets it off: it is gone, your hole loses half its size (never dropping below the size you started the level at), your chain breaks and you are thrown back, with the usual moment of bomb shield; your points are kept. It cannot be swallowed, pulled by a magnet, eaten by a rival or destroyed by a meteor, and there is only one per level.

Meteor showers Every seventh level from 50 (57, 64, 71 and so on, never a boss level, never the Graveyard) has a meteor shower, marked ☄ in the level list. A neon ring on the ground is a strike zone: it contracts for a couple of seconds, then a meteor lands. Everything inside the ring is destroyed and a crater stays. If any part of your hole is inside the ring when the meteor lands, the level is over. Rivals are destroyed by a landing on their centre and shrunk by one on their rim. The first shower drops five meteors with a 2.2-second warning; by the last there are sixteen with 1.6 seconds, in tighter bursts, and more of them are aimed where you are heading, so keep moving. Rings never cover your hole when they appear, and the first never lands before five seconds in.

Worlds Eleven worlds rotate level by level: Suburb, Industrial City, Farm, Forest, Snowy Village, Construction, Space Station, Old Town, Toy Raceway, Block Kingdom and Test Range, with the Dungeon for every boss. Each is laid out as a place (yards, fields, a campsite, a market square, a pit lane), so look for the clusters: a row eaten end to end keeps your combo going. Most creatures run when you get close; some stand their ground (the world’s tip tells you which). Vehicles keep to their lanes and knock you back until you outgrow them.

Rivals AI holes eat the same map: one from level 2, a second from 63, a third from 127, a fourth from 187, each easing in over its first twenty-five levels. A rival with a red ring is bigger than you and can swallow you, which ends the level; one with a green ring is yours to eat for a bonus. The smaller hole falls in the moment its centre crosses the bigger one's rim, so skimming the edge of a red-ringed rival is already too close; sizes within a tenth of each other are a stand-off, and you bump instead. Rivals are always slower than you, never take power-ups, and bombs and oil hurt them too. Rivals never swallow one another, whatever their sizes; only you can eat a rival, and only a rival can eat you. A rival that is swallowed is replaced six seconds later: a newcomer rises in on the far side of the map at the size the swallowed rival had (never more than rivals usually keep to yours), and can neither eat nor be eaten until it is up, so the count never drops; a replacement pays the full bonus but grows you half as much. Bosses and their escorts are never replaced. Early on they mostly compete for food; from level 50 they hunt you more and more when they are bigger, and late in the game they keep full pace with your size, so stay ahead or stay away.

Bosses Every 25th level, up to the final boss on level 250, a boss hole prowls the Dungeon: bigger, faster and hungrier than any rival, and it comes for you. From the fourth boss it brings escorts. Points don’t count there: outgrow it (watch its size tag), then swallow it. Only you can end a boss; its escorts never will. Each boss is tougher than the last.

Mercy Losing a level makes the next try a little kinder. A standard level adds 5 seconds to its clock for each loss from the third on (8 seconds past level 150), up to four times; a boss starts 8% smaller and gives 10 more seconds for each loss from the second on, up to three times. A clear resets it. Every lost level on the main road also costs 500 coins from your wallet, or whatever is left in it; it never goes below zero, and your score, records and achievements are untouched. Losing a boss level, the daily challenge or a Graveyard run costs no coins.

Coins and boosts Clearing a level pays coins: 20 plus twice the level number, more for more stars, double for a boss, a quarter for a replay. Some achievements pay coins too. Before any level from 2 on, spend them on a larger starting hole (size 22 instead of 18) or ten extra seconds; each lasts one attempt, win or lose. Prices climb faster than the pay does, so a boost late in the game costs several clears; the larger start costs double on a boss, and the extra time isn’t sold on bosses. Your wallet holds up to five larger starts’ worth, or 15,000 coins while the Graveyard is still locked.

Skins Coins also buy hole skins, from a mossy rim to a black hole. They change only how your hole looks.

Stars, achievements and perks A clear earns one to three stars for time left, best combo and share of the map eaten; stars count once per level, and cleared levels can be replayed. Forty-two achievements run in ladders across the whole game and the Graveyard (the road, bosses, the chain, growing and eating, rivals and hazards, stars and coins, the Graveyard and the daily); the HUD shows the nearest one. They pay coins, the top of each ladder awards a skin that is not for sale, and a few early ones grant a small permanent perk: +2 start size, +3 s on every clock, a longer combo window, the x6 cap, one fewer bomb, faster power-ups.

Daily challenge One standard level and one Graveyard run a day, the same map for everyone that day: no boosts, no mercy, no stars. Meteor showers and the megabomb play just as they would on that level, on the day's own schedule. It pays like a replay and keeps its own best and your streak.

Mutators Optional handicaps from the start screen (double bombs, no power-ups, half the clock); each one active adds a bonus star to a clear.

The Graveyard Level 251 is endless, played in waves. Each wave sets a number of points, shown as Wave 5 · 2,500 / 4,000 on the pill; the moment you earn them the next wave begins with a fresh 45-second clock, and if the clock runs out first the run is over. Every wave starts over: your hole returns to its starting size, the old map and horde sink into the ground, and a fresh map rises with that wave’s horde. A horde of zombies, skeletons, ghosts and vampires hunts you: outgrow one and swallow it for points; one you can’t yet eat bites, which breaks your combo and dazes you for a moment but never costs time or size. Zombies and skeletons always become food once you outgrow them; ghosts drift through walls and vampires back off when you can eat them. Each wave the horde is a little larger, quicker and keener, up to hard limits (never faster than you, never more than ten), and each wave asks a little more. There is no last wave; the records are your best score and your highest wave. The Graveyard opens when you clear level 250, or earlier for 15,000 coins from the Levels screen; unlocking it early is permanent and changes nothing about the levels.

Records and transfer Records keeps your bests, achievements and the Graveyard records, and can export your whole progress as a code to paste into another device.

Credits Graveyard, dungeon, industrial, space station, space, suburban, holiday, forest, nature, fantasy town, platformer, toy car, prototype, factory, road, vehicle, character and animal models by Kenney (kenney.nl), CC0. 3D rendering by Three.js (MIT License, © 2010–2021 three.js authors). Fredoka and Nunito fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (fonts/OFL-Fredoka.txt, fonts/OFL-Nunito.txt). Everything else is original to this game.