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Playing the evader

You have twenty seconds and four lives. The chaser is faster than you think and smarter than it looks. This is how to make the clock run out on it instead of on you.

What the chaser is actually doing

A chaser in Quad Chase does not run at where you are. It runs at where you are about to be. It reads your heading and your speed and aims at the point where your line and its line meet. That one fact explains most early deaths: you run straight away from it, it cuts the corner, and the gap you thought you had was never there.

The answer is to stop giving it a line to read. Change direction often, and change it late, after it has committed to a path. A sharp turn when the chaser is three or four disc-widths away forces it to re-aim, and every re-aim costs it ground. Turning early, when it is still far off, costs you nothing but buys you nothing either; it simply re-aims at leisure.

Each chaser also has a lunge: a short wind-up (you can see a ring charging on it) followed by a burst. The lunge is the only moment a chaser fully commits. Once it has fired, it cannot steer, and it needs a few seconds before it can fire again. A chaser that has just lunged and missed is the safest thing in the arena.

The dash: spend it late

Your dash is one hard burst on a cooldown. It is not a sprint you hold down, and its real value is not the distance. It is that a dash at the right moment makes a lunge miss. A thin ring around your disc drains when you use it and refills when it is ready; the corner button glows when it is back.

• Dash when the lunge fires, not when it charges. Watch the ring on the chaser. When it lets go, dash sideways, across its path rather than away from it. A lunge is fast in a straight line and can't turn.
• Never dash because you feel nervous. Spending the charge early and then meeting a lunge with nothing left is the most common way to die between rounds 8 and 12.
• From round 8 you have two charges. Keep one in hand as long as you can. The second charge is insurance, not a second sprint.
• From round 12, PERFECT DODGE pays triple points and refunds the charge instantly when you dash through a lunge. It rewards exactly the habit above: dash at the lunge, late.

Use the blocks

The dark blocks in the arena are the evader's best friend. A chaser has to go around them; with VAULT (from round 3) you can dash into a block and leap clean over it, untouchable in the air. Circling a block with a chaser on the other side is the oldest trick in tag and it still works here, because a chaser that is aiming at your future position keeps choosing the wrong side.

The arena changes between rounds, and from time to time the blocks shift during a round. Look at the layout during the three-second countdown, pick the block you will fall back to, and note where the open lanes are. Corners are the trap: a corner gives you two directions to leave in, and a chaser coming in diagonally covers both.

Orbs worth the detour

Orbs drift into the arena during the round, and the chaser can take them too. Not every orb is worth the risk. The shield is: it blocks one tag and stays with you until it is used, which makes it the only thing in quick play that undoes a mistake. Freeze is close behind, since it slows every chaser to a crawl for two seconds. Points and the score doubler are nice but never worth running into a chaser's path for. The orbs page goes through each one.

Score: near misses beat safe laps

Surviving a round pays, but the game pays more for nerve than for caution. Passing close to a lunge, close enough to feel it, earns a near miss bonus and briefly slows time. A combo multiplier builds with every clean round you survive and breaks when you are tagged. So the best score comes from a long run of untouched rounds with a few close calls in them, not from hiding in a corner, which is both risky and pays almost nothing.

Two chasers, elites and the climb

From round 8 most rounds send a second chaser, and the pair flank: one comes straight, the other swings wide to cut off your escape. Every third round stays a lone chase so the rhythm doesn't flatten. Against two, keep both in front of you. The moment one is behind you, you are reacting to the other one blind. Use blocks to split them: a chaser on the far side of a block is out of the fight for a second or two.

From round 14 a chaser can turn up elite, marked with a gold ring. An elite feints its lunge, charging up and then holding, to make you waste your dash. Against an elite, wait for the burst itself, not the wind-up. It also shakes off a DECOY early instead of chasing the ghost for its whole life.

The rest of the skills arrive on a schedule: DECOY at round 16, WALL KICK at 20, AFTERBURN at 24. Each one is described on the moves and skills page. And from round 25 every third round is a wildcard that breaks a rule.

Know your chaser

The round intro names the chaser you are facing, with a hint about its weakness. They are not difficulty levels; they are different problems.

More on each of them, and on the runners you hunt as chaser, on chasers and runners.

When a run ends

You get four lives, and the run ends when the last one goes. Once a run, a tag comes with a rescue: GET UP puts you back where you fell, with the life you just lost. Tap LATER and the rescue is banked for your last life, which is usually the smarter use. In the apps a short ad brings you back; on this website it is free. The SECOND CHANCE perk makes it twice a run instead of once.

Every run you finish also pays coins to your disc in the Arena, so even a short run moves something forward.