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1When gameplay gradually goes into fast forward as you progress. The core gameplay mechanics stay the same, but everything speeds up, forcing the player to react with quicker reflexes to stay alive.
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3Historically, in older games, fast forwarding was often used to compensate for a limited number of [[GameLevel levels]]—when they ran out of new levels to show you, they'd have you play through the old ones again at a faster speed. Nowadays, it's still standard issue in action/survival-type {{Puzzle Game}}s like ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'', and one of the most popular ways to add DynamicDifficulty to an EndlessGame, including many {{Endless Running Game}}s.
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5If you're lucky, the controls (player character/cursor movement, key repetition, etc.) get faster too, allowing you to keep up. If you aren't, you're eventually [[FakeDifficulty felled by the controls' lack of responsiveness]].
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7{{Subtrope}} of DynamicDifficulty. Compare KillOneOthersGetStronger.
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9!!Examples:
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11[[AC:Video Games]]
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13%% Please add examples in alphabetical order by work title.
14* The race sections of ''VideoGame/{{Battletoads}}'' get faster and faster towards the end of each level.
15* ''VideoGame/{{Breakout}}'' is one of the earliest examples of this trope, dating all the way back to 1976. The ball speeds up as the player destroys more bricks.
16* Part of the package in ''VideoGame/{{Burnout}}'', where over the course of the Career Mode you would unlock gradually faster cars. The hardest part about the Super and Special class cars isn't the tracks, but the speed: you would have less time to react to corners, walls and oncoming traffic. Luckily with most tracks you get the chance to [[{{Antepiece}} drive around them in a slower class better-suited to them]] before stepping up. For new players some of the hardest challenges in the game are the Preview Events where you're kicked to one of the fastest cars in the game on a track you've never raced on before.
17* ''VideoGame/{{Critical Mass|2011}}'' uses this in most of its gameplay modes.
18* ''VideoGame/DancingMonster'' has seven speed settings. Faster speeds make the monster's weak points harder to shoot.
19* In ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbTVtZo9LoE Dubbelmoral!]]'', the speed and frequency of branches falling from the trees, one of which hangs over the urinal you need to regularly use to avoid bladder rupture, increases with the player's score. At high levels, the falling branches can [[CycleOfHurting stunlock the player to death]] in just a few seconds.
20* In ''VideoGame/DuckHunt'', the ducks fly faster every level.
21* ''VideoGame/EpicCoaster'': The rollercoaster gets faster and faster the longer you play, going at 30 MPH after 30 seconds, 50 MPH after a minute, and so on.
22* Difficulty progression in most of the ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' games primarily comes from the animatronics showing up at your door at an increasingly fast rate.
23* ''VideoGame/FridayNightFunkin'': Naturally for a rhythm game, faster songs mean faster notes to hit with quicker reflexes. Week 1's final song, "Dad Battle", has a fast-paced tempo appropriate for what is essentially a boss fight against The Father, after which rapid fire notes appear in just about every song at one point or another.
24* ''VideoGame/{{Frogger}}''. The cars that move across your path in the first half of the screen and some of the turtles in the second half can increase in speed after you clear a screen.
25* ''VideoGame/FruityFrank'': If you started on "slow", the speed progresses to "fast" in 5-6 levels, but doesn't increase further.
26* ''Website/FunOrb'' includes several games that do this, including ''Bouncedown'', ''Deko Bloko'', ''Lexicominos'', ''Geoblox'', ''Pixelate'', and ''The Track Controller''.
27* ''VideoGame/{{Galaga}}'' gets faster and faster as you progress.
28* Most ''VideoGame/GameAndWatch'' games work this way, although they often reset back to a slower speed after a certain number of iterations.
29* This is one of the ways ''VideoGame/GuitarHero'' (and its sibling, ''VideoGame/RockBand'') dials up the difficulty; on higher difficulty settings, notes reach the end of the track much more quickly. The songs themselves don't change, so if you know the tempo of the songs you can use your ear to keep pace, but novice players who sight-read the track will quickly get overwhelmed.
30* ''Videogame/JetpackJoyride'' twists the trope: the power-up vehicles usually dial back the scroll speed to give the player a chance to adjust to the change in controls. Depending on how far the player's current run lasts, the speed may decrease or increase again on losing the vehicle.
31* ''VideoGame/LethalLeague'' applies this trope to a FightingGame. A HyperdestructiveBouncingBall bounces around the stage, and characters attack it to speed it up, allowing it to deal more damage if it hits another character. It doesn't take long for this ball to start careening everywhere at ludicrous speeds, upon which direct contact with it becomes a OneHitKill.
32* ''Neon Drive'''s speed increases with the difficulty setting, with the music accordingly remixed. Good luck, as the game is already NintendoHard on normal difficulty.
33* ''Website/{{Neopets}}'' had plenty of flash games, with the arcade-like ones becoming faster as the game continues (or at least require the player to do things faster with a smaller time limit.)
34* With ''VideoGame/NumberMunchers'' level 19, the troggles move faster.
35* ''VideoGame/PacMan'' gets faster and faster on higher levels, continuing until the KillScreen.
36* ''VideoGame/Progressbar95'': Later levels drop segments much faster and they away more erratically as well.
37* ''VideoGame/{{Prohibition}}'': If you manage to survive long enough killing gangsters, the game will eventually loop back to the first enemy... with the timer (and nothing else) going down faster.
38* The original video game ''VideoGame/{{Pong}}''. Every time a paddle hit the ball, the ball would speed up slightly, increasing the difficulty in returning the ball.
39* This is utilized in almost every ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' game's Scenario and Endless modes, with later levels increasing the speed at which Puyos fall into your playfield. As the games' hardware improved, they began to rely less on this and more on smarter AI; nonetheless, you can still expect fast drop speeds against later opponents.
40** In ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyoTetris2 Puyo Puyo Tetris 2]]'''s Boss Raids mode, when you encounter him as a boss, [[Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] has a skill that forces you to drop your Puyos and Tetriminoes ''much'' faster.
41* ''VideoGame/RhythmHeaven'' has minigames that speed up in mid-play. Also, in ''Megamix'', some challenge courses ratchet up the difficulty with "Tempo Up" modifiers, though some games that silence the music to trip a player's timing can become [[NonIndicativeDifficulty easier]] at higher speed.
42* ''VideoGame/RobotUnicornAttack'' starts out slow but as the game goes on, the speed gradually increases.
43%%* ''VideoGame/RunNGun'' has this.
44* In ''[[VideoGame/WithFriends Stampede Run]]'', the game gets faster every 1000Ms.
45* The special stages in ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog3'' do this the longer you remain in the stage, with music to match.
46* This was a lucky accident in ''VideoGame/SpaceInvaders''. Just rendering all the sprites of the enemies was a heavy load for [=CPU=]s of the time, but as the player killed more aliens, the computer was able to devote more cycles to moving the enemies, making them faster. Of particular note was that the game designer was unaware that the slow speed was a processing issue, and deliberately set the game to a high speed to compensate. He didn't realize his error until he started playing and shooting at aliens. He liked the effect though, [[AscendedGlitch and deliberately left it in]].
47* ''VideoGame/StarCastle'', by Cinematronics. The game speeds up as time goes by, the only difficulty increase in the game.
48* In ''VideoGame/SubwaySurfers'', not only does the player character move faster, but so do oncoming trains! This does make jumping the gaps between trains easier to a point, and also means that the player gets more mileage out of magnet and jetpack power-ups because more coins scroll by to collect in the same time interval.
49* ''VideoGame/SuperCrossfire'' speeds up each time you reach a checkpoint, making it more difficult to dodge the enemy shots.
50* ''VideoGame/TempleRun'' plays this straight. The longer the player is alive, the faster the main character runs.
51** In fact, the number of {{Endless Running Game}}s that ''don't'' use this are practically non-existent, outside of ''VideoGame/FlappyBird'' and its many many clones.
52* ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'', the poster child for the FallingBlocks game, is a classic example. In Creator/{{Nintendo}}'s ''Tetris'' games, the pieces will eventually reach fall speeds that are so fast that it's near-impossible to move a piece to the extreme left or right, resulting in a KillScreen for all but the greatest of players. In Creator/{{Sega}}'s ''Tetris'' games, the max fall speed is even faster, but to compensate, pieces can land on the stack or the floor and still move around for a short period of time. In Arika's ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster'' and a few other miscellaneous releases such as ''Tetris DS'', pieces will eventually hit instant drop speed.
53* ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo'' even on 'Easy mode' while Neo gets faster later on, so do most of the enemies, especially the harder ones.
54* ''VideoGame/ToontownCorporateClash'': The Pacesetter is already a pretty tough boss, being the last {{Superboss}} out of eight, having a lot of health, and dealing tons of damage. What makes his fight one of the hardest in the game is that the game's clock will speed up every turn, capping at 4x speed. This affects attack animations, timers ([[AntiFrustrationFeatures although the "hurry" sound effect will always play when you have 5 real-time seconds left to pick a gag]]), the music, ''everything''. His OneWingedAngel mode cranks it up even further, making you play the game at 6x speed.
55* In Ultra Quickplay in ''VideoGame/TheVoidRainsUponHerHeart'', accelerating their attacks is one of the methods used to overlevel bosses and make them more difficult.
56* The microgames in ''VideoGame/WarioWare'' are ludicrously simple, so this is the main source of challenge. There's also speedup within some boss stages -- a notable example is Kat's boss stage in the original, where red and blue platforms speed up and slow down the game respectively when jumped on. When replaying characters' stages, the first and second time you clear the boss games results in microgames being promoted to the second and third difficulty level, and subsequent completions of the boss games only increase the speed.
57* Zone races in the ''VideoGame/{{Wipeout}}'' series. Your speed increases slowly and gradually, and [[EndlessGame the only way out is to crash]]. Also carries the normal racing game example where you graduate to higher speed classes as you progress through the campaign.
58%%* ''VideoGame/{{ZooCube}}'' plays it straight.
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60%%
61%% Please add examples in alphabetical order by work title.
62%%
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64[[AC:Non-Video Game examples]]
65* In ''Literature/DuneMessiah'', Alia's combat simulator attacks faster and faster the longer she manages to evade it. Eventually, she manages to evade long enough for the simulator to go off the rails and start dishing out potentially lethal blows.
66* In ''Literature/EndersGame'', Ender briefly plays a space combat simulator. He quickly tires of playing against the computer, because the AI plateaus and from then on it just keeps running the same strategy with increased speed until no human reflexes could keep up.
67* In the {{pinball}} game ''Pinball/FunHouseRudysNightmare'', "Haunted Roller Coaster" (a VideoMode which uses the flipper buttons for ActionCommands) requires increasingly stringent reaction times as the player progresses.
68* In Creator/WilliamsElectronics' not-quite-a-{{Pinball}} ShootEmUp ''Pinball/{{Hyperball}}'', the attacking enemies move faster as the player advances in levels.
69* A classic television example: The ''Series/ILoveLucy'' episode "Job Switching." The series main female protagonists, Lucy and Ethel, have gotten jobs at a candy factory and have been sent to the wrapping department, where their task is to wrap pieces of chocolate-covered candies into a piece of tinfoil and return it to the belt. At first, it is a seemingly simple task and both Lucy and Ethel are doing well ... until more and more chocolate pieces are sent through the line and the conveyor belt is just getting started. As the women struggle to keep up, an eventually impossible task, the forewoman comes in to check their progress ... and she merely thinks that the women can handle the brisk pace. So ... "SPEED 'ER UP!!!" ... and the impossibly rapid pace -- and Lucy and Ethel unsuccessfully scooping up all the candies as they fly by at a blur -- would go on to become a television masterpiece that has stood up more than 65 years.
70* ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer'' exaggerates this through ManipulativeEditing -- when he says that the Kool-Aid Man video game for Atari gets faster in later levels, he cues sped up gameplay footage.

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