Every once in a while, a game will come along that will make you stop what you’re doing and just watch. Canabalt [App Store] IS that game. A flash game originally, Canabalt was developed by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman. He made it in just 5 days for the Experimental Gameplay Project. Over the course of a relatively small development cycle, Canabalt was ported to the iPhone by Semi Secret (formed by Saltsman and partners Eric Johnson and Danny Baranowsky).

Upon firing up the game, you’re immediately thrust in to an apocalyptic world with rumbling skyscrapers and shattered glass. You control a nameless, suited man, running for his life from the impending doom that surrounds him.

Canabalt is incredibly rudimentary when it comes to mechanics, but that is without question its claim to glory. There is one button control. You tap anywhere on the screen to jump – that’s it! You can vary your jumps by pressing on the screen for a bit longer if you need to jump farther. The objective is to survive as long as you can, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Watch out for buildings, boxes, bombs, and of course… gravity.

As your character runs, he steadily increases speed, which enables you to clear greater distances (particularly when running across the top of a collapsing building!) but also decreases your reaction time significantly. The boxes mentioned before help out in that regard, allowing you to slow up so that you don’t inadvertently clear an entire building with your jumps. Of course, don’t hit too many boxes, because you’ll be sure to fall to your demise if you do.

The playfield is randomized each time you play, meaning you won’t lose interest quickly. This means too of course that you won’t be able to simply learn the maps and master them – makes it exciting, no? A local scoring system is in place on the iPhone and you can submit your results to Twitter. My highest score is 6393m.

Graphically, Canabalt is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Again, simple in design, everything you see is blocky and pixelated like an old 8-bit console game. Yet the environment is effortlessly brought to life by by amazing geometrical effects, screen shakes and gloriously smooth parallax scrolling. Keep in mind, that you can’t pay too much attention to what’s going on outisde of your immediate path of action – lest you want to turn in to a fine mist. The iPhone version has had its aspect ratio adjusted slightly to fit the screen, but you lose none of the impact of the original.

For maximum awesome, headphones recommended. That is what is printed on the splash screen that greets you upon loading the game. What an incredibly accurate statement. The sound design is nothing short of brilliant. From the rumbling of the collapsing buildings to the jet engines of an alien (?) craft – everything seems to have been built for maximum impact. Even the music could’ve been ripped straight out of Blade Runner. Trance-like tunes erupt in to a massive techno anthem when the action heightens.

An expected update should include online leaderboards!

Maximum awesome. 5 stars.

Play the original at Adam’s site!