Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Flash Game

In this promotional tie-in game for The Forgotten Sands, the Prince of Persia is running, running, running through a steadily-scrolling dungeon filled with injuring and killing traps, wounding enemies, speed-bump sand opponents, and obstacles requiring the use of magic powers. Until the boss fight at each level's end (guarding magical fountains controlling elemental powers), the running is automatic: in a style compared to Canabalt, the Prince's movement is continuous and the player intercedes only to operate the jump, attack and magic buttons at the appropriate moments.

Reducing progress to the timely application of three controls is not meant to underrate the complexity of the single true path unfolding before the protagonist: different situations will call for several of the modern prince's parkour-inspired acrobatic moves, all invoked with the minimal controls. Additionally, explicitly situating this game back in the Sands of Time canon, players experiencing untimely ends (or just bothered by their poor performance) have three seconds to optionally time-travel far enough back to undo their messy failure... but the game clock is always ticking, and online high scores are tabulated with an eye to speedrunners.