Pat the Fly

There isn’t a party at the top. Beat Sausage King, survive the last roof run, take the cyan portal. The screen says RUN FLY, Pat looks briefly pleased, and that is the celebration. No fireworks. No credits. A quip, a share button, and permission to close the tab.

The city runs vertically through alleys, fire escapes, rooftops, clouds and eventually parts of the atmosphere where a pub fly has no legitimate reason to be.

Every 800 height, the number in the corner ticks up and the HUD calls it a level. As in a storey. As in a round. As in the HUD would. It isn’t a level. It’s just how far you’ve flown. There is no ultimate level. There is an ultimate geezer, eight bosses, and a door.

You need to get past all of them.

Jump between pads, use your wings when the gaps get too wide, and stomp enemies from above. Hitting them from the side hurts Pat instead, so try not to fly face-first into people.

Gold pads mean trouble. Beat the boss, survive the roof section afterwards and find the next portal.

Cyan portals take you up. Pink portals take you back down. Pink can be useful if you missed something. It can also undo ten minutes of competent climbing remarkably quickly.

They’re a bit of a black hole. You don’t know how far you’re going. Pot luck.

Collect what you find on the way. 10 beer crates gives you an extra life. 100 coins gets you another pint. Pints can be drunk on a pad or thrown at bosses, which is probably the closest this game gets to resource management.

Food usually helps.

Usually.

Then there’s Dave.

Dave isn’t an enemy. He’s just Dave. You’ll find him sitting, fishing, drinking, sleeping and generally occupying places that would be more useful without him. Bounce off him rather than killing him. The first Dave you find on a run may give you an extra life.

Nobody knows why.

Dave has a very good union.

Choose Easy, Mid or Hard at the start and play as Pat or Patricia. If you’re playing Pat, Patricia appears at rest stops along the climb. Find her and Pat gets a kiss and his lives refilled.

That is the entire romantic subplot.

Pat is a fly with a pint, a gold medal and far too much responsibility.

He originally crawled out of rly.fun, somehow acquired his own token, then a Video Engine, and eventually a platform game because apparently nobody was supervising the roadmap.

The game is essentially one very long night out played vertically.

Most of the people trying to kill Pat are people he knows. Some want money. Some want revenge. One works in pest control. Several appear to have legitimate grievances.

Pat’s solution to all of them is roughly the same: get above them, land on their head and continue towards the stratosphere.

The motto is BE BETTER THAN WHO YOU ARE.

Pat is making slow progress.

$RUNFLY has nothing to do with your score. The game doesn’t pay tokens, stake anything or affect Video Engine renders. It’s just something stupid to play while the useful bit is processing.

The bosses don’t line up neatly with those sections. That’s deliberate. The city isn’t a spreadsheet.

Video renders take a minute.

You could stare at the progress bar.

Or you could send a beer-drinking fly through several thousand metres of urban infrastructure while being pursued by a kebab merchant, a pest-control operative and an enormous sausage.

The game is free. It doesn’t earn anything, stake anything or interfere with your render. When your video is ready, close it and get back to whatever supposedly sensible thing you were doing.

Pat will still be here.

Probably in a bin.

For information about the part of RUNFLY that actually does something useful, the FAQ remains regrettably available.