Glass Bridge is live. One wrong tile ends the run.

For months the Golden Ticket has been the one thing in Remix that refused to explain itself. You would pull one out of a loot box, read a description that told you nothing, and file it in your inventory next to the streak freezes. People asked what it was for. We said you would find out.

Here is what it was for.

A bridge made of glass, over nothing

Glass Bridge is exactly what it sounds like. Rows of glass tiles stretch out over a void. Every row has one trap. You pick a tile, you step, and the row either holds or it doesn't. Clear a row and your score goes up by one. Rows alternate between four tiles and three, so every other step is a one in three chance of ending badly.

That is the whole game, and it is much harder than that sentence makes it sound.

One Golden Ticket buys one entry, and an entry comes with three lives.

The lives are what turn this from a coin flip into an actual game. Hit a trap with lives left and you don't lose the run. You go back to the start of the same bridge with your score reset to zero. Same tiles, same traps, one fewer life. Every safe tile you already found is still safe. Whether you can retrace the path you just walked is entirely between you and your memory.

Hit a trap on your last life and the run is over with nothing locked in.

The board is the point

Your score is how many tiles you cleared, and it goes straight onto a live leaderboard with $5,500 in cash on it. Not Bits. Dollars. The top ten all get paid: $1,000 for first, $900 for second, stepping down a hundred a place from there to $100 for tenth.

The first contest opened Thursday, July 23 at 12:30pm MT and closes Friday, July 31 at noon MT. There is no stopping to bank a score along the way. A run that is still going counts on the board at whatever score it is standing on, which means the player sitting in first place right now might be one tile away from losing all of it. When the clock hits zero, standings are final exactly as they stand. Be on the board when time runs out.

Once a day the board comes to you. If you are in the money, you get a push telling you where you sit and what is riding on it. If you are holding a ticket you haven't used, you will hear about that too.

Getting a ticket

Golden Tickets are rare on purpose. Three ways in:

• Loot boxes. Every box rolls one bonus reward, and the Golden Ticket is the rarest thing on that table by a wide margin.
• Level 30. Reach it and one is guaranteed.
• Season recaps. Platinum tier and above earn them when a season closes.

There is no store page. You cannot buy your way onto the bridge, and that is the only reason a spot on the board is worth anything.

Why we built a game instead of a feature

Remix is a platform for games other people make. That is the whole thesis and we are not moving off it. But a platform full of games should occasionally be a game: one shared board, one clock, everybody standing on it at the same time, real money at the end of it.

Glass Bridge is that. It runs in the Remix mobile app, on iOS and Android. If there is a Golden Ticket sitting in your inventory, this is what it has been waiting for, and you have until noon MT on Friday, July 31 to spend it.

• App Store
• Google Play