Home to many simple casual games that cater to people of all ages, Huuuge Games recently released another fun and easy to learn yet difficult to master physics-based game, Rollercoaster Dash. Like Tap Dunk, Super AirTraffic Control, and the Hill Racer series, Rollercoaster Dash has very basic controls and contains simple mechanics that it can easily be mistaken as a game for kids. Surprisingly enough, the game requires tremendous skill from a competitive point of view as it can push for a good sense of timing, some memory skills, and some fairly quick reaction time for anyone to fully master.
In Rollercoaster Dash, you take control of a 3-cart rollercoaster through a perilous track with a seemingly unpredictable terrain, fun yet surprising loops, and game-ending gaps. As you dash and literally fly over parts of the track, you will earn points for every second of air time and every successful landing. With each jump as risky as any other, mastering the art of landing wheels first is crucial to your survival. Landings may be perfect, which grants you a double score multiplier; or very fatal, which can make you lose one up to all three of your carts. As your score grows higher, the in-game atmosphere, as indicated by the shifting colors, changes as the tracks become visibly more treacherous, with wilder terrain and more surprising gaps. You can customize most aesthetics to liven up your game, from the rollercoaster, to the tracks, and down to the very background. Acceleration power up and starting point advancement can be purchased as well to give you an improved boost towards getting a better high score.
With its easy controls and simple mechanics, Rollercoaster Dash doesn’t need to provide any sort of tutorial. You only need to know the controls: hold the screen to run, release to fly, and hold again to land. As easy as it seems though, the amount of challenge the game offers may be overwhelming for some people, even veterans of the genre. Whether you are new to this type of game and having a hard time mastering the controls, or an avid physics-based gamer who wants to get the highest scores for bragging rights, our simple Rollercoaster Dash guide, that comes with a couple of tips and tricks, can help you know the game better and work towards earning much higher scores as well.
1. Take It Slow, It’s Not A Race
Perhaps it’s the title, the game description, or maybe it’s the actual gameplay that seems to suggest that you have to go fast. With that mindset though, you’ll be banking on a lot of risky runs, making wild jumps while you hope for the best and let luck take you as far across the track as it can. While this may work well on some rare situations, earning high scores in Rollercoaster Dash takes much more than speed and luck. Equally important to note as well, is that for purposes of efficiency, it’s best to try going for consistent results, meaning having a good enough chance of repeating performance for the same situations you encounter from one run to the other, if not a better one. Simply enough, if it works, do it on your next run; if not, then formulate and try another approach.
Given that the goal of the game is to obtain high scores (whether it be compared to your previous one or better than what your friends have), the only value of speed here is getting the right momentum to make the jump and landing you need to earn more points and proceed further through the track. There are neither fuels that run out and leave your rollercoaster dead in its tracks nor time limits to push you towards rushing to travel certain distances. As such, there should be no pressure whatsoever to hurry yourself forward faster than you can handle.
For starters, the rollercoaster tracks are not randomly generated. This means that at certain points in the game, there will be familiar spots where repeat runs will practically tell you what to expect and, presumably, what to do. Since it is very difficult to memorize each and every bit of slumps and curves that you come across, what you should try to remember, as far as practicable, are some areas in the path to watch out for, most especially the ones where you typically suffer a disastrous landing; lose one, two, or all carts; or (even with fair warning) gaps that you occasionally fall into. In this sense, it’s important to note as well that while those cool loops help earn you easy points and some coins, hitting them the wrong way can be very fatal.
Taking it slow, therefore, gives you time to analyze the track better and identify at which particular points you should slow down on and which ones to speed up from. Once you have a clear enough picture of where to make those jumps and where to earn those points, you can proceed to dash faster or even jump higher so long as you stay consistent with each jump and landing. With this, you can more consistently earn enough points to take you to the next level where you can employ the same tactics over again.
2. Use Quick Taps
Although basic controls tell you to either hold or release, using only these methods will make it difficult for you to succeed in some instances. There are certain situations where you might not want to take off from the uphill and instead prefer to just approach it slowly to use the momentum from the top of the curve to boost down for better speed on the next set of curves. Also in some cases, holding the screen down while you are in mid-air causes your rollercoaster to almost always plummet to the ground or crash head on to the side of a hill, sending you to an instant death. If you encounter these situations often, then you should learn to use quick taps to give you just the right amount of speed to have a better control of your movement most especially when holding down the screen just doesn’t suffice.
3. Do Short Jumps And Quick Landings
It’s always very tempting to boost all the way and dash as fast as you can go, jump as high as you can, and get as many airtime points as you can earn to rack up more points and move on to next higher difficulty level faster. As this may work well occasionally, perfection of this method requires a fairly vivid memory of the track ahead of you (or a lot of luck). Without a good enough idea of where you will land next, this will probably be successful at around 50% of the time. As such you should instead go for quicker and shorter jumps instead. It won’t earn you as many points per jump, but considering comparative ease and lower levels of risk involved, it is a lot more practical and will more likely earn you as much or, perhaps, even more points than shooting for those long, high jumps. Additionally, this is a great way to practice those perfect landings that double the points you earn from air time. As you will be jumping lower and landing quicker, grabbing perfect landing points a lot more often will help you earn points faster and make each of your runs safer.
4. Ignore The Coins On The Tracks
Like many running or racing games out there, having coins out in certain areas of a stage breaks the occasional monotony of each game area. Not only does it add new colors to the background, it also presents itself as an additional incentive for players to grab and collect. This concept holds true for Rollercoaster Dash as well and you’ll often see a line of coins floating around and over the tracks. While you need to earn coins for some purchases, keep in mind that you should best focus on the task at hand and consider coins as mere distractions. As it takes a lot of concentration and precision to dash, jump, and make solid landings in the game, it’s best to keep your eyes exclusively on your rollercoaster and the tracks. In any case, even without trying to, you will get some of these coins as you move through the track and secondly, the game offers free coins if you’re okay to watch short video ads anyway.
5. Always Choose To Continue
Regardless of whether it’s a good run or not, being presented with an option to continue your game from where it has supposedly ended is always a good thing and should not be missed. While you ceaselessly aim to earn high scores better than your best one, it can’t be helped that there are times when a run is just not as impressive as you would hope it should be. Regardless of your performance on your run, you will often be presented with a chance to continue your game in exchange for watching a short video ad. As it takes a mere 30 seconds at most, it’s best to take advantage of it at all times. This will restore not just one but all three of your carts on practically where you left off. As you are aiming for better scores, having all that extra life will practically double your chances of making good progress towards a new high score. If you find it boring at times, think of it as a rest period for your fingers and your eyes.
6. Spend Coins On Acceleration And Average Score Starts
There are loads of skins that you can purchase with coins to liven up your gaming experience even more. From backgrounds, tracks, and even the rollercoaster itself, each skin looks uniquely different and not just palette swaps of the original design. While cool to look at and entertaining to actually use, new skins are purely visual and has no performance-altering effects on the game. As our main goal is to earn the highest score possible, it will be best to primarily spend gold on leveling up acceleration and later on, using average score starts.
With every level up of acceleration, the speed at which your rollercoaster accelerates becomes faster. This is especially useful in situations where you need to take a slow approach towards one slope and then speed up and jump over the next one. Additionally, landing a bit too late and not having enough momentum to jump over a gap or a series of gaps can be avoided if your acceleration level is high enough. As costs to level up grow higher per level, you should consider spending initially to the point where you are confident and comfortable with your rollercoaster’s acceleration speed.
The average score start takes your average score for all previous runs and advances your rollercoaster to the point in the track where you should be at with your average score as your starting score. This is actually a pretty good deal considering you can basically skip the initial stages and move on forward depending on your average score. Unfortunately, though, these costs 40 coins and you will most likely never be able to consistently afford this to keep moving forward. What’s best is to utilize this when you are intent on memorizing certain parts of the track, which are a little far from the original starting point, that you need to be more familiar with. At the same time, this can be an essential boost for runs where you especially mean to beat your current high score.
7. Pay Attention To The Changing Colors
The higher your score goes, the more difficult the track becomes. One way to determine this is by looking at your current score. Initially, difficulty changes once every 500 points for the next two levels. Then later on, it becomes once per 1,000 points and so on. Another clear indication of a level or difficulty increase is the changing colors of the background and the tracks. As it is easier to keep your focus on the rollercoaster and the track, it will be best to just be aware of the color changes when it happens instead of constantly looking at your score. In fact, it’s a good idea to just ignore your score altogether while playing as it may distract you from keeping a good eye on your rollercoaster.
And that’s about it for our Rollercoaster Dash cheats, tips and tricks. We hope you had a good time reading this guide and that you learned much from it as well. Do you have additional Rollercoaster Dash tips, tricks, or strategies we forgot to mention? Please, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comment area!