Web Dashers Gamemodes

Which gamemodes are in Web Dashers?

Seven. Character Select on the main menu has one tab of icons for each of them, and no tab for Swing.

Every mode uses the same action button. That is a click or tap on the game, or Space, the Up arrow or W on a keyboard. What changes is what the button does:

• Cube: tap to jump.
• Ship: hold to climb, release to drop.
• Ball: tap to flip between the floor and the ceiling.
• UFO: tap for one hop, even in mid-air.
• Wave: hold to go up at an angle, release to go down.
• Robot: tap for a small jump, hold for a bigger one.
• Spider: tap to snap to the opposite surface.

Cube

The cube is where you start. Every main level we opened began as a cube.

Press the button to jump. Keep it held and the cube jumps again each time it lands. The game's own How To Play screen puts it this way: "Tap the screen to jump. Hold down to keep jumping."

Jump orbs use the same button. Press while the cube is touching an orb to use it.

Ship

Hold the button and the ship climbs. Let go and it sinks. The in-game help says: "Hold to fly up. Release to fly down."

There is no jump in this mode. You steer with how long you hold. In Cycles we held the button and the ship rose to the top of the screen, then dropped as soon as we let go.

Ball

The ball rolls along a surface. Press once and gravity flips: the ball leaves the floor, crosses the gap and rolls on along the ceiling. Press again to come back down.

We tested this in Cycles. Each press sent the ball to the opposite side.

UFO

Each press makes the UFO hop once, and you can press again before it lands. Tap quickly and it climbs higher with every tap. Stop tapping and it falls back to the ground.

Holding the button does not keep it in the air. One press is one hop, however long you hold.

Wave

Hold the button and the wave travels up at an angle. Release and it travels down at the same kind of angle. It leaves a zigzag trail behind it, so you can see every change of direction.

The wave never flies level by itself. It is always heading up or down, unless it is sliding along the ground.

Robot

The robot jumps like the cube, but you choose the height. A quick tap gives a small hop. Holding the button gives a higher, longer jump.

In our test a short tap barely lifted it off the ground, while a longer hold carried it roughly a third of the way up the screen.

Spider

Press the button and the spider jumps to the opposite surface in an instant: floor to ceiling, or ceiling to floor. It stays there and keeps running until you press again.

It works like the ball's flip, but with no travel time. The ball takes a moment to cross the gap. The spider is simply on the other side.

Is Swing in Web Dashers?

No. The developers' own feature list says the gamemodes are mostly done, with Swing as the exception.

That matches what we saw. Character Select has no Swing tab. In the level editor, the last page of portals has a yellow portal that we expected to be Swing. In our test level it turned the icon into a ship instead.

Web Dashers is in beta and still changing, so this may not stay true. The date under the title shows when we last checked.

How to tell which gamemode comes next

Your gamemode changes when you pass through a portal. With the default settings, each gamemode portal has a small icon inside it that shows what you are about to become.

That icon comes from the Enable Portal Guide option. It is switched on by default. You can find it in Settings, then Options, on the Visual page.

Colour helps too. The portals we tested were green for cube, orange for UFO, light blue for wave, white for robot and purple for spider.

Want to try one mode by itself? Open the Level Editor, start a new level, place one portal near the start and choose Save and Play from the editor's pause menu. That is how we tested the modes on this page.