Expo and React Native Skia
One TypeScript codebase on Expo SDK 57. The game simulation has no React or platform code in it at all, and Skia does every bit of the drawing.
iPhone game · Free
Jump Lad
Leg it across Ireland: over stone walls, under bunting, and past sheep that won’t budge. An isometric runner through five stretches of Irish landscape.
Five stretches of Ireland, one road that never ends
The scenery changes every 380 metres, and each stretch brings its own hazards, verges and weather. The further you get, the faster it goes.
- 1The Boreen
- 2Dublin Rooftops
- 3Giant’s Causeway
- 4Cliffs of Moher
- 5Bog & Round Tower
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The BoreenDry stone walls, bins, cones and holes in the road. -
Dublin RooftopsSlate, chimney pots and rain after dark. -
Cliffs of MoherParked tractors can’t be jumped. Dodge them. -
The GearSpend your coins on your county’s colours.
Easy to pick up, hard to put down
Three lanes and a handful of gestures. Runs are quick, and the next one is always one tap away.
Three lanes, one thumb
Tap to jump, swipe down to slide, and swipe sideways to switch lanes.
Shamrock shield
Grab a shamrock and it absorbs one hit when you need it most.
All 32 counties
Bank coins between runs and kit yourself out in any county’s colours.
Faster every metre
The track speeds up and the obstacles get trickier the further you go.
Keep an eye out. Ireland’s a small country, but there’s more out there than the track shows you.
Just you, the road, and whatever’s coming next
Jump Lad is a straight game. Coins buy jerseys and nothing else, and the difficulty never changes with what you wear, so a good run is always down to you.
- No ads and no in-app purchases
- No timers or energy meters
- No pay-to-win: jerseys are purely for the look
- Works fully offline and collects no data
How it’s built
Jump Lad is a React Native game. Here are a few of the decisions that keep it smooth on a phone.
One picture per frame
Each frame is recorded into a single Skia picture and handed over through a Reanimated shared value, so drawing never triggers a React render. That saved about 8ms a frame.
A bot that plays the game
A headless bot plays its way into the later biomes, and the checks confirm that none of 30,000 generated rows blocks every lane. The bot caught two real fairness bugs before launch.
Need a React Native app built with the same care? Let’s work together
Questions
Is Jump Lad free?
Yes. Jump Lad is free on the App Store, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
What do coins do in Jump Lad?
Coins bank between runs and buy county jerseys in The Gear. Jerseys are purely cosmetic, so the difficulty is the same whichever one you wear.
Does Jump Lad need an internet connection?
No. Jump Lad works entirely offline, makes no network requests, and collects no data. Your best distance, coins and jerseys are stored only on your device. The privacy policy has the details.
Which devices can play Jump Lad?
Jump Lad is made for iPhone and needs iOS 16.4 or later.
