Canabalt

Canabalt reduces the controls to a single button - the character runs through the streets of a collapsing city on their own, and the player only decides when to jump over debris, gaps between rooftops, or falling rubble. The speed keeps increasing, meaning decisions have to be made ever faster, and a single mistake ends the run, so the game is defined by a constantly growing tension between certainty and the risk of the next jump. It was precisely this purity - one button, a clear goal of surviving as far as possible - that gave rise to the entire genre now known as endless runners.

The gray, monochromatic graphics evoke destruction and urgency without unnecessary detail, while pulsing electronic music keeps up the pace of play. The game takes place on the rooftops of a destroyed city's skyscrapers without ever explaining what exactly happened - visual hints of rubble and falling objects are enough for the atmosphere to work on its own. With no intro screen, settings menu or explanatory text, the game starts practically the instant it's launched, which only heightens the feeling of an urgent escape.

Its author is Adam Saltsman, who released Canabalt for free in the browser in 2009, and the game quickly became the reference point for dozens of later endless runners on mobile and the web alike. In the history of independent games it belongs to the titles that proved a completely minimalist concept with a single button can found an entire genre. Canabalt is rightly counted among the games mentioned even today in overviews of the history of mobile and independent game design.

Why play it: An ideal short dose of adrenaline for anyone who wants to try the game that stood at the birth of the entire endless runner genre.