Scorcher guide - Tips and tricks for sand skimmers
Scorcher is a solid runner that’s all about speed and smoothness. As a run progresses, things get faster and faster until you inevitably wreck.
Considering getting far in individual runs is the key to scoring big and unlocking new stuff, you’ll want to make sure you’re playing well. Here are a few tips that can help you do just that.
Use two hands
Scorcher has a simple enough control scheme that you can play it with one hand. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
If you play with a second hand on your device, you can control your steering and your jumps with more finesse, which can definitely help you as things get ever more hectic. With two hands on your device, you can tap to make your ship jump instead of releasing your steering finger, and doing so lets you play Scorcher without ever relinquishing control of your ship.
You can get close to mines
One of my main beefs with Scorcher is how it doesn’t really explain anything about itself at all. There’s something kind of neat about this, as it lets players discover new things about the game through experimentation and repetition, but some of these revelations are just things you might wish you knew from the outset.
A perfect example of this is Scorcher’s mines. These little buggers inevitably appear provided you don’t crash super early into a run and they can be a real pain. They aren't as big a pain as they appear, though. You see, mines in Scorcher have this kind of energy pulse that emanates from them, which might make you think they are proximity mines that explode if you fall within the pulse’s range. As it turns out, this is totally not true. The pulsing of the mines is just some visual flair, and you can get as close to the mines as you want without taking damage (provided you don’t actually hit them, of course).
Collecting sharks=more distance
If you want to post a solid distance score in Scorcher, you have to do more than just survive. Although it is an auto-runner and staying alive does indeed increase your score, there’s another factor at play in Scorcher that can really make the difference between a mediocre run and a great one: sand sharks.
The sand sharks in Scorcher are most obviously beneficial in that gathering 10 of them can repair your ship if it has already taken a hit. What may not be as obvious—but arguably more important—is the fact that you get a distance bonus for each sand shark you gather on a run. So, be sure to gather sand sharks early and often to make sure you’re maximizing your end score.
Play in worm mode for unlocks
The worm mode in Scorcher is a strange twist on the idea of a runner in the sense that it isn’t endless. Instead, you’re trying to hunt down as many sand sharks as possible within a time limit. While this mode might be kind of puzzling, it's a great tool for mopping up unlocks if you find yourself struggling to earn your next ship.
As it turns out, Scorcher’s worm mode is the most efficient way to unlock everything in the game because it always provides you with tons of sand sharks to eat without much standing in your way. There isn’t even a way to take damage to fail in this mode.
Of course, being time-limited can make it hard to gather as many sharks as you need in a single run for some late-game unlocks, but there’s a secret there too. Your invincible sand worm can also plow through mines without being hurt, and doing so apparently counts toward your final score. So, by just hitting as many things as possible during runs of the sand worm mode, you should be able to unlock everything Scorcher has to offer pretty quickly.