Voleur guide

How to play

Your burglar runs on his own. You do the jumping and sliding.

Some things happen by themselves: he vaults single crates, grabs zip lines, climbs drainpipes and firemen's ladders, and bounces off café awnings back up to the roofs. If he comes up just short of a ledge, he'll often haul himself up.

Voleur is best played with your phone turned sideways.

Staying ahead of the gendarmes

Two gendarmes chase you from the start, and later L'Inspecteur joins them. A run ends three ways:

• Arrested. Stumble, and the gendarmes close in for about 7 seconds. Stumble again while one is right behind you and they've got you. Watch for the "Gendarmes close" warning.
• Through a skylight. Don't land on skylights. You'll drop into somebody's dinner party.
• Missed the jump. Fall short of a roof and it's down to the street (into a flower cart, if you're lucky).

You stumble when you hit a chimney, crates, a dormer, a statue or a flame, catch a ledge instead of landing on it, get soaked by a fire hose, or fall in the floodwater. Running into a wall and getting stuck counts too, and so does standing still: after a few seconds you're cornered.

Making them fall

Gendarmes aren't as nimble as you. They slip at edges, miss jumps, fall in the Seine, miss the boat, get left at the station, get hosed off the roof by firemen, and get knocked off the Métro by the signals. Each one that goes down is worth 50 points, and L'Inspecteur is worth 100. They come back after a while, running in from behind.

L'Inspecteur

About 48 seconds into a run, L'Inspecteur of La Sûreté arrives: "Halte, Voleur !" He's faster than the gendarmes and knows the shortcuts, popping out of roof hatches if you get too far ahead. Get far enough ahead anyway and you lose him, for 100 points. He'll be back.

The police airship

About 72 seconds in, Le Dirigeable sweeps a searchlight over the roofs. Stay in the beam and it locks on ("Spotted!"), and the gendarmes come running. Outrun the light, or slide down beside a chimney to hide.

Scoring and Élan

Your score is your distance in metres, plus 5 for every louis, 50 for every diamond, the bonus for gendarmes you shake off, and your Élan points, all multiplied by your level.

Élan is style. Every trick fills the Élan meter at the top left, and as it fills, your tricks count double (×2) and then triple (×3). It drains if you go a few seconds without a trick, and a stumble empties it.

A backflip that lands badly is never a fall: he just rolls out, a little slower.

Goals and levels

You always have three goals on the go. Finish all three and you go up a level at the end of the run, and your level multiplies your score: level 3 means every point counts three times.

The first few sets of goals walk you through the game:

1. Slide down 3 sloped roofs · Ride the Métro across the Seine · Collect 100 louis in one run
2. Make 2 gendarmes fall in one run · Steal the blue diamond from the ballroom · Run 800 m in one run
3. Land 3 backflips · Shake off L'Inspecteur · Reach Élan ×2
4. Lose the gendarmes with a smoke bomb · Keep running until the rain comes · Reach Élan ×3

Later goals ask for diamonds, zip lines, power-ups, scattered pigeons, longer runs, and running until first light. Once you've done them all, they come round again, harder.

Power-ups

Power-ups turn up on the roofs now and then. Run into one to use it.

• Kite. Glide over the gaps for 9 seconds. It carries you to the next roof and never lets go in mid-air.
• Cat's paw. For 10 seconds, the louis come to you.
• Smoke bomb. The gendarmes cough to a stop ("Kof ! Kof !") and lose you, for 25 points each.

Where the rooftops take you

Every run starts high above Paris, then drops down to the street and back up again. Along the way:

• Le Métropolitain. Drop onto the train on the Passy viaduct and ride it across the Seine, right past the Eiffel Tower. Swipe down to duck the signal bridges, and watch out: a gendarme (or L'Inspecteur) climbs aboard at Champ de Mars. A signal will knock him off.
• Le Tramway. Ride the tram along the Grands Boulevards from Opéra to République, ducking the shop signs.
• La Crue de 1910. The Great Flood of January 1910. Hop the wooden walkways and floating crates, then jump into a rowing boat and ride it down the current. The gendarmes miss the boat.
• Le Quartier en Feu. Burning roofs, with firemen's hose jets that pulse on and off. Jump the low jets, slide under the high ones, and let the hoses knock the gendarmes off.
• Le Bal. A ballroom under a glass roof. Running on the glass is safe, but swipe down on it to drop in, grab Le Diamant Bleu (500 points), and leap out of the window.
• L'Opéra Garnier. Vault the gilded statues and slide down the copper dome, with a diamond on top.
• Notre-Dame. Jump the chimeras along the roof, then run down a flying buttress.

Keep going and the weather turns: fog rolls in off the Seine, then rain on the zinc (wet roofs mean longer, faster slides), then lightning. Last long enough and the sky starts to lighten: first light, and the city wakes.

The wardrobe

The gold louis you collect are kept between runs. Spend them in the wardrobe on the title screen.

Le Chat Noir is a black cat who runs along behind you, sits beside you when you stop, and hides when you have to swim. He's just for looks, and worth every louis.

Come back every day

• Find the six letters of VOLEUR. One or two are hidden on the roofs in each run, collected in order. Spell the whole word in one day for 500 louis. A new word starts at midnight.
• Days in a row. Play on a new day for bonus louis: 50 on day one, 100 on day two, and so on, up to 500 a day from day ten. Miss a day and it starts again.
• The Run of the Day. Every day there's one course that's the same for every player in the world, with its own Game Center leaderboard. Learn it, and see how you rank. It changes at midnight UTC.

Ten tips

1. Hold to jump higher. Most missed jumps are taps that should have been holds.
2. Slide down sloped roofs: it's free speed.
3. Backflip whenever you have a long jump. It builds Élan faster than anything else.
4. Keep doing tricks. Élan drains after a few seconds without one.
5. After a stumble, play it safe for a few seconds until the gendarmes drop back.
6. Never land on a skylight, except the ballroom glass, and only then by swiping down.
7. Fallen into the street? Look for a café awning to bounce back up, or a drainpipe to climb.
8. The back-row roofs (the ones you can drop through) hide extra louis and a diamond.
9. In the airship's beam, a chimney is your friend: slide down beside it to hide.
10. Work on your goals. Each level multiplies your score, so finishing goals matters more than one great run.

Ready? Voleur is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad: get Voleur.