Orbit Hop tips: when to chase perfects and when to play safe

How a hop works

In Orbit Hop your comet circles a planet. Tap and it leaves in a straight line in the direction it was moving. If that line crosses another planet's orbit ring, you're caught. If not, you drift off into the dark, or you stay in flight too long, and the run is over.

Every new planet pays 10 points times your multiplier. A perfect skim, where your line passes right along the surface of the planet that catches you, doubles the multiplier, up to x32. Any ordinary catch on a new planet drops it back to x1. So score is mostly about chains of perfects, and distance is mostly about not missing.

What we tested

The game has a built-in practice bot that plays real runs through the same physics you do. We ran it 60 times for each setup. It either aimed at the middle of the next planet or at its edge, for a perfect, and we added a little random error to every tap: a very steady thumb (typically off by about two hundredths of a second), a normal one (about four hundredths) and a shaky one (about seven hundredths).

Steady timing beats everything

Look down the planets column. Going from a very steady tap to a normal one cut the distance in half, and a shaky tap cut it in half again. Nothing else we changed came close. The difference between those rows is a few hundredths of a second, which is about how much your thumb drifts when you rush, look away from the comet or tap on the beat of the music instead of the orbit.

So the first tip is boring and true: watch your comet, not the next planet, and tap when its direction points where you want to go. Gas giants spin slowly and give you the most time, so use them to settle down. Ice worlds spin about 40 percent faster than rocks, so the right moment comes sooner than it feels.

Chase perfects only when your timing is steady

Here's the interesting part. With a very steady tap, aiming for the edge scored about 28 percent more than aiming for the middle, and it didn't cost any distance at all. With a normal tap, the same edge aiming scored less and ended runs sooner, because a line that just grazes the planet has less room for error than one through the middle.

A perfect needs your line to pass within a thin band right along the planet's surface. That band is the same width on every planet, so on a big gas giant it's a small slice of the whole catch ring, and on a tiny pulsar a near miss is a real miss. In practice:

• Early in a run, or when you're warming up, aim through the middle and get a feel for the spin.
• Once a few hops in a row feel easy, start aiming for the near edge and build the multiplier.
• At x8 or x16, look at the next planet before you go for it. If it's small, moving or a pulsar, take the safe hop. A missed perfect costs the chain, a missed planet costs the run.

What ends most runs

Across all our runs, drifting off into space ended the large majority, far more than meteors or black holes. Meteors ended only a handful of runs, because they only hurt you while you're flying and the bot waits for one to pass before it launches. With steady timing, black holes swallowed more of the edge-aiming runs (15 against 9), because waiting for a perfect angle gives the orbit more time to shrink. Launch from a black hole on the first decent angle, and take the escape bonus of 50 times your multiplier.

Quick checklist

• Watch the comet's direction, not the target.
• Settle your timing on gas giants, and tap a touch early on ice.
• Aim through the middle until the hops feel easy, then go for the edge.
• Bank a safe hop when the multiplier is high and the next planet is tricky.
• Never loiter in a black hole.
• Skips pay for every planet you jump, so a line that passes one planet and lands on the next is worth taking.

For planets, modes, Constellations and the Comet Shop, see the full Orbit Hop guide.

Questions