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Best
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Bouldering with a forearm meter. Tap the next hold and the lower hand reaches for it — but every hold pumps you out at its own rate, and the wall gets meaner the higher you go.
You hang on a bouldering wall by two holds, and every hold you can reach from where you are has a white ring around it. Tap one and your lower hand lets go and reaches up to it, while the higher hand stays put. Your score is the highest point you manage to reach before you come off.
The bar at the top of the screen is your forearm pump. Hanging fills it, and when it reaches the end you fall. How fast it fills depends on what you are holding. A big green jug actually lets you shake out and recover. A yellow edge is fair, an orange crimp is hard work, and a purple sloper is the worst of all. For the third of a second a hand is moving you hang off one arm, which pumps you faster still.
The hold your top hand is on also decides how far you can reach next. From a jug you can lock off and stretch a long way, from an edge a little less, and from a sloper you can barely move. Grab a bad hold and your next choices shrink, and if nothing at all is in reach the run is over on the spot.
Every second on the wall also adds a little fatigue that never recovers, so you cannot rest on jugs forever. The higher you climb, the further apart the holds are and the worse they get, and above fourteen metres there are no jugs left at all. Sooner or later the wall wins, and the question is only how high you are when it does.
Read two moves ahead, not one. The ring shows what you can reach now, but the hold you pick decides what you can reach next. A high sloper looks like progress and then leaves you with nowhere to go, while a slightly lower jug keeps three or four options open. Before you tap, look at what sits above the hold you are about to grab.
Jugs are where the climb is won. Every time both hands are on jugs your pump drains, so it can be worth a small sideways detour to rest before a hard section. Do not stay long, though: fatigue that never recovers keeps building every second, and resting too long costs height you would otherwise have gained.
Moving hurts, so waste fewer moves. For the moment a hand is travelling you hang off one arm, which pumps you out faster than hanging still. Short shuffling moves feel safe but pay that price again and again. When you have a long reach from a jug, use it and gain as much height as you can in one go.
The top of the run is a sprint. Above fourteen metres there are no jugs, so from there your pump can only go up. Arrive at that height as fresh as you can, then stop resting and climb as fast as the holds allow, taking edges over crimps and crimps over slopers wherever the choice exists.