Ready, set, go! Online dash games are all about speed and reflexes! This is a deceivingly new game genre that has been conquering new fans at every turn… or every jump, in this case.
These are simple games with even simpler controls. Typically, your job is to control a character that won’t stop moving forward and you can only make it jump or dodge in some way to avoid a series of obstacles. One could say that these games have always been popular but they were simply bundled together in the running games genre. Games like Subway Surfers, Temple Run, or Sonic Frontiers, for example, in which the characters take off in an endless run would match the description.
However, the emergence of dash games as a genre of its own can be traced back to Geometry Dash, a simple 2D game of retro inspiration. Its simplicity clashes with the level of skills required to play it for longer than a few seconds, making it, all at once, extremely addictive, fun, and frustrating.
The premise of the game is straightforward: control a square dashing at full speed through an endless straight path. Spikes and other obstacles will appear in your way trying to stop the square from moving forward. You can only make the square jump to avoid these obstacles. Other than that, you have no control over the character.
Several games inspired by Geometry Dash have appeared since. They are all faithful to the same level of speed and challenge as the original, but they also include something unique to make them stand out. For example, in Square Rush, the players must defy gravity and play upside-down sometimes while in Geometry Dash Maze Maps, instead of moving in a straight line, you control the square through a series of maps to reach a portal that carries you to the next level.
Arcade games
Although these games with cubes and other geometrical shapes dashing through maps are relatively new, they are inspired by classic arcade games. In an era when graphics and storylines had to be kept as simple as possible for lack of resources, the challenging and addictive aspects of the games lay in their basic controls but hard skills.
Atari Pong is a perfect example of such. The game couldn’t be more simple than it is and, yet, it marked the birth of video games as we know them today. Dumb Pacman is another classic that has become part of pop culture around the world.
All of these to say that, if you enjoy these online dash games, you should also check out our collections of arcade and skill games. Have fun!
