The Rolling Stone
Gameplay trailer
What Is The Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone is a 3D endless runner I built as a solo project. The stone moves forward automatically while players steer, jump, collect coins, and use temporary power ups to get past increasingly difficult obstacles.
I wanted the game to be easy to play on both desktop and mobile. Progress carries between runs, and players can compete on global leaderboards.
Project Details
- Role
- Solo Developer
- Engine
- Unity 6
- Development
- January 2026 to present
- First release
- April 15, 2026
- Current build
- 0.9.6.5
- Status
- Public beta
Control design
- Movement
- Free lateral steering
- Jump
- Variable height
- Score
- Distance
Controls for desktop and mobile
Instead of fixed lanes, the player has free lateral steering and direct control over jump height. Holding jump produces a higher arc, while releasing it early creates a shorter hop.
The controller combines steering smoothing, air control, jump buffering, coyote time, and separate acceleration and response tuning. The HTML5 release supports rebindable keyboard controls, controllers, touchscreen input, and accelerometer steering.
A run ends when the stone falls from the track or hits an obstacle without an active Phase Shield. The score is based on distance. Coins are tracked separately and can be spent on cosmetics.
Handcrafted obstacles arranged for each run
The track is assembled from 14 handcrafted segment prefabs rather than procedurally generated geometry. The current set includes rotating and lateral obstacles, underpasses, crushers, falling hazards, jump sections, recovery areas, and safe floor sections.
A segment director manages weighted selection, difficulty tiers, minimum distance rules, repeat cooldowns, difficult segment streak limits, and recovery sections. Object pooling lets segments be recycled as the run continues.
The stone speeds up during each run, and harder segments appear more often at greater distances.
Reasons to return beyond one high score
Coins earned during runs can be spent on visual customization. The current build includes 16 cosmetic options across stone skins, trails, and obstacle themes. Cosmetics do not provide gameplay advantages.
I also built 15 achievements and 24 daily and weekly missions. They give players extra goals, such as reaching distance milestones, collecting coins, using power-ups, and unlocking cosmetics.
Coin Magnet, Phase Shield, and Speed Rush are the three power ups currently available during runs.
Saving progress and protecting global rankings
Unity Gaming Services handles anonymous authentication, moderated display names, Cloud Save, and two global leaderboards. Best Runs ranks each player's best distance, while Richest Players ranks lifetime coins earned.
Progress is saved locally and synced to the cloud. Because the current WebGL build does not support Unity Player Account linking, progress may not carry between devices.
I added checks on both the device and through Cloud Code. Impossible or duplicate submissions are rejected before they reach the leaderboards.
What changed after playtesting
Playtests exposed a slow opening, inconsistent jump control, frustrating obstacle combinations, and few reasons to play again.
Based on that feedback, I added variable jump height, sped up the beginning of each run, smoothed the steering, and changed how obstacle segments were selected. I also added clearer controls and an interactive tutorial. Cosmetics, achievements, missions, and global leaderboards gave players more reasons to return.
Because the controller affects obstacle timing, speed, and the overall difficulty curve, each movement change had to be tested against the rest of the game rather than tuned in isolation.
Results
What I would improve next
Future updates are planned for the UI and UX, additional obstacle segments, more cosmetics, environment themes, new gameplay features, and game modes beyond the current endless mode.
Play The Rolling Stone
The current public beta runs directly in a desktop or mobile browser on itch.io.