Bull Run
WALL
1×
October 1987. A stone canyon under sodium lamps, and the tape is already red.
How it plays
One thumb. Three lanes.
No time to think.
Bull Run is a game about reaction, not calculation. There is no portfolio to balance and nothing to cash out. Green candles pay, red candles cost, and a ladder of multipliers climbs as long as you keep collecting — eleven rungs to 75×, and one bad row takes rungs off it.
The market phases loop and come back hotter each time, so a run has an arc rather than a difficulty curve. You are not trying to survive. You are trying to get out before the tape turns.
Best of three
The set is scored on the total
Three runs make a set, and it is the total that counts — not the best of them. A weak second run is a real hole in the number, so the third one gets played.
The news
122 headlines, none repeated in a day
Read it, pick one of three answers, live with it. Most of them are jokes. Some of them cost you the run.
The margin bar
Three hits and you are liquidated
Two on OVERNIGHT, where nothing you collect buys a mistake back. Every hazard is read on lane distance, never on how big it looks.
The floors
Four places to lose your money.
Each floor is its own world with its own light, and the harder the room the more the headline pays to take out of it.
THE LOBBY
1×
The walk in. Marble, brass, and the sun coming off the floor hard enough to delete the lane markings.
ALL IN GOLD
1.2×
The same street at four in the afternoon. One red candle ends it.
OVERNIGHT
1.5×
The thin session. The floor shakes, the lights go out, and nothing you pick up buys back a hit.
The roster · 23 runners
Everyone on the roster is somebody you have met.
The Bagholder, carrying a duffel in each hand, both pointing at the floor. Paper Hands, whose head is folded paper stencilled FRAGILE. Diamond Hands, an ape whose knuckles are modelled as cut stone rather than painted to look like it. The HODLer of Last Resort, a marble figure standing where a central bank should be — and the one character on the rail that cannot be bought at any price.
Every one of the 23 carries a single permanent Edge, and no two edges move the same number. The badge and the edge are one claim made twice: a mythic is stronger than a legendary, and the price list says so.
- 1 Common
- 2 Rare
- 7 Epic
- 8 Legendary
- 4 Mythic
- 1 Secret
The deal
Not one advert in this game you did not ask for.
The sponsored break was built, measured, and deleted. What is left runs on three rules that do not bend.
- 01Every ad pays you something in the game.
- 02You are never asked twice on one screen.
- 03Saying no never costs you anything you have already earned.
Coins come off the road and buy the roster. Gold is rarer — a handful of golden candles a run, and the last of them only lands if you stay in, so the top of the shop is priced in days played rather than in grinding.