Guides › Scene guides
Black Hole Guide: How to Survive the Endless Finale
At 10,000 metres the Agri-Grid's road runs into a ring of white light, and everything after that is the Black Hole: no ground, no traffic, no finish line. It is the last scene in Brakeless and the only one that never ends, so every long run is decided in here. What an event horizon is, and why the debris looks like pasta, is covered on the science page. This page is about staying alive once you are inside, and about the one scoring rule that only exists past the horizon.
The Black Hole at a glance
| Starts | 10,000 m, straight out of Agri-Grid 2126 |
|---|---|
| Ends | Never. Every kilometre rolls a new layout. |
| The "road" | No surface at all: a channel of open fall between two translucent walls that widen and narrow with each kilometre |
| What moves | Stretched wreckage of rock, cars, buildings and ice; a faint echo of your own car; in one layout, a solid copy of your car |
| What kills you | Any strand of wreckage, and that solid copy |
| What doesn't | The walls, the faint echo, and the giant derelict that sometimes drifts overhead |
| Difficulty phase | Redline on arrival; Event Horizon from about 10,650 m, for the rest of the run |
| Scoring | Close calls pay bonus metres, chained up to ×4 |
Crossing the horizon
The last stretch of the Agri-Grid empties out: the robo-grazer herds stop coming, the oncoming lane clears and the traffic thins. Then the hole rises over the road — a black disc in a bright ring of light, one side of the ring brighter than the other, purple haze around it — and grows until it swallows the view.
For the swallow the game takes the wheel: the car is drawn to the centre and your keys do nothing. Take your fingers off them. When you come out of the blackout to a flash, a boom and the BLACK HOLE banner, your first input should be a decision, not a key you happened to be holding.
What you are looking at
In the chase view there is nothing under the car. Streaks of blue-white light rush past toward a violet glow pulsing far ahead. On either side stands a tall translucent wall with a bright line along its base: the throat, the channel you fly in. The walls are harmless. When they close in they push the car inward, and their edge lines flare while they move, so you can see the squeeze coming.
The hazards are strands: everything the hole has swallowed, pulled long and thin. Violet rock with glowing cracks, car husks with smeared tail-lights, slabs of building with lit windows, shards of ice. Three things about them decide most deaths:
- They keep stretching as they fall. A strand that looks short near the top of the channel is longer when it reaches you. Leave more room than it seems to need.
- The lean is the direction. Every strand points the way it is travelling. One tilted to the right is drifting right, and the steeper the tilt, the faster it crosses the channel. Read the angle, not just the position.
- Some come in from the sides, through the walls. The space right next to a wall is where those give you the least warning.
Every so often a faint blue copy of your car appears ahead, steering a beat behind you. That is the photon echo. It is light, not metal: drive straight through it.
Sectors: a new kilometre, a new layout
The first kilometre inside is always DEBRIS RAIN, an even fall of mixed strands. After that each kilometre picks a layout, announced by a small spaced-out caption and a low tone as the light shifts colour. The order changes every run, and no layout comes twice in a row. Each sector has the same shape: an easy first half, then the walls close and the debris thickens until just before the next caption.
- SERPENT CHANNEL (cold blue) — dense walls of near-vertical strands on both sides of a winding gap that gentle steering can always follow. Ride its middle and start turning before each bend.
- CROSSFIRE (magenta) — almost everything arrives from the sides, in bursts of two or three from the same side. When a burst opens on the left, expect the next strand from the left too, and give that wall room.
- HUSK GRAVEYARD (ember orange) — a few huge, slow wrecks in the narrowest channel of the lot. Little to dodge, nowhere to put it. Pick your side of each wreck early.
- ICE DRIFT (pale blue) — wide shards on steep diagonals. Here the lean matters most: a shard ends up where its angle says, not where it is now.
- PULSE WAVES (white-violet) — a row of strands across the whole channel with one door in it, then a pause, then the next row. The door only moves a short way between rows, so stay near the last one and shift as soon as the new row shows.
- TIMELIKE CURVE (teal) — a marker drops where your car is, and about a second later a solid blue copy of your car lands on it, having retraced the path you drove. Sitting still is the only way to die here; a sidestep of one car-width is enough. The debris thins out to make room for it.
Now and then a sector adds a set-piece: a city-sized derelict drifting overhead (pure scenery), a second photon echo, or a singularity that surges every several seconds and sets the whole channel blazing.
How to drive it
Live near the middle. The walls herd you there anyway, side entrants give the least warning near the edges, and from the centre a dodge either way costs the same. After every dodge, ease back with small corrections.
Respect the second half of each sector. As the walls close you have less room to fix a late decision, so commit earlier. The moment a new caption appears and the walls reopen is the calmest second you will get: re-centre, don't relax.
Read the caption, then drive the layout. The Event Horizon banner at about 10,650 m is the last step of the difficulty ladder. After it, a long run is a string of good sector reads.
Coins still turn up, along with the odd ghost diamond. Past Event Horizon a coin can't slow you below 150 km/h, but at 300 km/h any breather helps, provided it sits on a line you were taking anyway. Never chase one toward a wall.
Close calls, chains and the ×4 multiplier
Everywhere else a close call only charges your ghost shield (see How to Play). In here it also pays bonus metres, shown in the popup, and raises a chain a quarter step at a time: ×1.25, ×1.5 and on, up to ×4 after twelve in a row. The chain holds for a couple of seconds after each shave, then drains rather than vanishing, so one more close call in time rescues it. The 3D HUD shows a readout like ×2.5 CHAIN; the classic top-down view adds a short bar that runs teal while the chain is safe and orange as it slips.
Strands always register as a plain CLOSE, however fine you cut them, so here the chain, not the margin, grows the payout. A steady rhythm of ordinary shaves beats one heroic razor. The edges of a serpent channel, the door of a pulse row and a tidy sidestep of the landing echo are all repeatable sources.
One trade to know: no close call counts while a ghost shield runs, so your chain slips while it burns. Take the shield anyway. A dead run scores nothing.
Black Hole questions
Do the walls in the Black Hole kill you?
No. They narrow the space you can fly in and push the car inward when they close, but touching them is safe. The strands are what kill you.
What is the blue copy of my car in the Black Hole?
Usually the photon echo, which is harmless and can be driven through. The exception is the Timelike Curve sector, where a marker drops under your car first and the copy that lands on it is solid. Move off the marker.
How do you get the ×4 multiplier in Brakeless?
Chain twelve close calls inside the Black Hole without letting the chain drain away between them. It only exists past the horizon; anywhere else, close calls charge your shield instead.