Tunnel Rush is the neon tunnel game from Deer Cat Games where you spin around a speeding tube and dodge whatever comes at you next. Runs are short and restarting is instant, so one game tends to turn into several.
We built Fluxline, our own original game around that spin-to-dodge loop, and it runs right here on this page. It is free and there is nothing to install or sign up for. The track changes every day.
Play Fluxline now
Tap or click the game to start. On a keyboard, Space or Enter also starts a run once the game has focus. Sound is off until you turn it on with the sound button or the M key.
How to play Fluxline on a phone, Chromebook or desktop
Your ship rides the inside wall of the tunnel and moves forward on its own. You rotate around the tube to dodge, and you flip between phase A and phase B to get through phase walls.
- Keyboard: Left and Right or A and D to rotate, Space or Up to flip phase, P or Escape to pause.
- Touch: hold the left or right half of the screen to rotate, and swipe up or tap the round phase button to flip phase.
- Mouse: hold the left or right half of the game to rotate, and press Space to flip phase.
Two things end a run. Striped blades block part of the tube, so rotate around them. Phase walls only let one phase through: cyan triangles let phase A pass and magenta dots let phase B pass, so you can read them by shape as well as color. Touch a blade, or a wall in the wrong phase, and the run is over.
Your best score for today, your all-time best and your daily streak are saved on this device. Nothing leaves your browser.
How scoring works
Your score is the distance you cover plus bonuses. Gold shards trace a line through each section, and every shard you collect adds to your chain. Every 6 in a chain raises the multiplier one step, up to x8, and missing a shard outside Overdrive resets it. Slipping past a blade by a hair without touching it scores a CLOSE bonus with a short burst of slow motion, and it counts toward the chain too.
Shards and close calls also fill the flux meter at the top of the screen. When a shard fills it, Overdrive starts on the spot. If a close call tops it off, the next shard you collect starts it. For 5 seconds you go about 30% faster and smash through blades and phase walls for extra points.
The tunnel moves to a new zone every 2,400 m (Ion, then Nova, Solar, Aurora and Void, and then the cycle repeats), and each new zone pays a bonus. Void starts near 9,600 m, which makes it a fair distance goal for a long run.
The daily track
The track is built from your device’s date, so everyone playing on the same calendar date gets the same track, and your score compares directly with a friend’s. Before a section reaches you, a solver checks that a way through it exists, and it plans for a slower turn rate than your ship actually has. So if you crash, there was a way through that you missed.
At the base speed, the second zone at 2,400 m is just under a minute into a run, and Void is about two and a half minutes in. Starting again takes one tap or the Enter key.
After a run, the Share button opens this page’s share menu with your score and the day’s track. Play on consecutive days and your streak grows. It is stored on this device, so there is nothing to sign up for.
Tips to go further
- Follow the shard line. The shards sit on a route the solver has already checked, and each one builds your multiplier.
- Flip phase as soon as you see the next wall’s pattern, not when you reach it.
- Read walls by shape: triangles mean phase A, dots mean phase B.
- Once Overdrive starts, steer into blades for its 5 seconds, since every smash pays a bonus. Smashing stays on for one more second after Overdrive ends.
- Close calls pay well but leave little room, so chase them only when the next obstacle is far off.
- On a touch screen, keep your thumb down through a turn instead of tapping. Steering only happens while you hold.
How Fluxline compares to Tunnel Rush
Fluxline keeps the parts of Tunnel Rush that people come back for. You rotate around the tube to dodge, the camera rolls with you so the whole tunnel seems to spin, and the base speed only goes up, from about 330 km/h at the start toward 880 km/h on a long run.
We added a few ideas of our own. Phase walls give each run a second decision on top of where to steer, and the shard line rewards a clean racing line. Enough shards and close calls set off Overdrive, 5 seconds of smashing through blades and walls. Each day brings one shared track, and a streak counts how many days in a row you have played.
We left out level select, unlockables and multiplayer, so every run is the same endless mode. Fluxline also has none of the original’s own modes, such as the same-screen 2-player mode listed on Poki, and every visual is drawn by our own code rather than taken from the original. If you want that 2-player mode or the original’s look, play Tunnel Rush itself.
How we built a 126 KB tunnel racer
The whole game is a single HTML file, and it makes zero external requests. It renders in WebGL2 with high-dynamic-range render targets where the GPU supports them, plus a bloom pass that makes the blades and walls glow. Where the browser supports WebGPU, a compute shader runs the particles, up to about 131,000 on desktop and half that on phones; elsewhere the particles fall back to WebGL. The track generator and its fairness solver are compiled to WebAssembly and run in a Web Worker with a plain JavaScript fallback, and the music and sound effects are synthesized live with the Web Audio API.
Games like Tunnel Rush: Run 3, Color Switch and more
Run 3 and Color Switch often come up in the same searches as Tunnel Rush. Fluxline’s phase walls take their rule from Color Switch, and like Run 3 it turns the camera as you move around the tunnel. The table below shows where they differ.
| Game | Core move | Jumping | Color match |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tunnel Rush (3D) | Rotate around the tunnel to dodge | No | No |
| Run 3 (3D) | Run, jump gaps and switch walls | Yes | No |
| Color Switch (2D) | Tap to hop a ball upward | Every tap is a hop | Yes |
| Fluxline (3D) | Rotate around the tube, flip phase | No | Yes, marked by shape too |
If you came here from Run 3
Run 3, Joseph Cloutier’s browser game, also puts you in a tunnel in space, with a camera that turns as you move onto a new wall. The difference is that Run 3 is a platformer where you run, jump over gaps and land on the next tile. Fluxline has no jumping and no gaps. You stay on the wall and rotate, so it plays closer to Tunnel Rush than to Run 3.
If you came here from Color Switch
Phase walls borrow Color Switch’s main rule: you only pass through the part that matches your current state. Color Switch is a 2D game where each tap bounces a ball upward through rotating color obstacles, while Fluxline is 3D and you never bounce. Fluxline also marks each phase by shape as well as color, so the walls stay readable if cyan and magenta are hard for you to tell apart.
More reflex games you can play here
- Downhill Rush, inspired by Slope: steer a ball down a 3D track full of gaps and blocks as the speed climbs.
- Neon Track, inspired by Rolling Sky: steer, jump gaps and grab gems on a track floating in the sky.
- Shard Rush, inspired by Smash Hit: glide down a glowing corridor and throw balls to break glass.
- Holly Hill Dash, inspired by Snow Rider 3D: a downhill sled run with gifts, ramps and a new hill every day.
- Spiral Drop, inspired by Helix Jump: rotate a tower so the ball falls through the gaps.
- Prism Run, inspired by Geometry Dash: a one-tap runner with a new level every day.
- Corner Rush, inspired by Temple Run: sharp corners, jumps and slides on a daily path.
- Rail Sprint, inspired by Subway Surfers: switch between three tracks and collect coins.
Where to play the original Tunnel Rush
Tunnel Rush is a browser game by Deer Cat Games, and you can play it on game portals such as Poki, which also lists related games like Super Tunnel Rush. App stores carry several similarly named tunnel games from other developers, so check the developer name to tell them apart.
A similar tunnel game for Android: Tunnel Race
The game pictured at the top of this page is Tunnel Race: VR Racing Game by WarriorPrince, a separate Android game in the same style. You fly through an endless 3D tunnel, dodge hurdles as the speed rises, and spend coins on new planes. VR is listed among its features. It is free, rated PEGI 3 and listed with 10K+ downloads on Aptoide, and its last update was in 2021, so it is a small, older game rather than an actively developed one.
If you would rather install a full game, our guides to Temple Run 2 alternatives and Geometry Dash alternatives for PC compare 7 endless runners and 7 rhythm games.
Frequently asked questions
Can you play Tunnel Rush online for free?
Yes. The original Tunnel Rush is a free browser game on portals such as Poki. Fluxline, the game embedded on this page, is a free Tunnel Rush-style game with no download, no signup and no ads inside the game.
Is this the real Tunnel Rush?
No. Fluxline is an original game we built, inspired by the spinning-tunnel loop of Tunnel Rush. It is not made by, affiliated with or endorsed by Deer Cat Games, and it uses none of their art, names or audio. The download link above is for Tunnel Race: VR Racing Game, a separate Android game by WarriorPrince.
Can you play Tunnel Rush on a phone or Chromebook?
Yes. The original Tunnel Rush is a browser game on portals such as Poki, so you do not need an app store, and Fluxline above runs in mobile browsers and on Chromebooks too. On a phone, hold the left or right half of the screen to steer and swipe up or tap the phase button to flip; on a Chromebook, click the game once and the keyboard does the rest. Fluxline needs a browser with WebGL2 turned on, and if a school or work network blocks game pages, that block applies here too.
How fast does Fluxline get, and does a run ever end?
A run ends only when you crash. Speed starts around 330 km/h and climbs toward 880 km/h, and Overdrive adds about 30% for 5 seconds at a time. The zone changes every 2,400 m, and after Void, the fifth zone at 9,600 m, the cycle starts again from Ion. At the base speed, Void is about two and a half minutes into a run.
Why do spinning tunnel games make you dizzy?
When the camera rolls, your eyes see the whole tunnel turning while your body stays still, and that mismatch makes some players queasy. With your device’s reduced-motion setting on, Fluxline turns off screen shake and motion blur, cuts color fringing to a minimum and shrinks the particle bursts from pickups, smashes and crashes to about a third. The background dust and speed streaks stay, and the tunnel still rolls with you, so take short breaks if the spin bothers you. On a keyboard, P or Escape pauses a run at any point.
