Every trap, ranked by cruelty

How cruelty is scored

Cruelty is not difficulty. A hard hazard you can see is fair; an easy one hiding behind a camera angle is a war crime. Each hazard was scored on three axes: telegraphing (does it warn you?), punishment (what does a mistake cost?), and malice (does it seem to enjoy it?).

Two hundred Discord members voted. The data was then argued about for a week, which is the real community content.

The tiers

S-tier — criminally cruel: Magnet jaws and polarity gates. Jaws capture you mid-perfect-arc and re-launch on their schedule, not yours. Polarity gates invert your steering at the exact moment you've committed — the chamber equivalent of a rug pull.

A-tier: Pendulums (predictable until there are three), crystal spikes (invisible in Frost Hollow's glare), and thermal updrafts that gently redirect your line into the aforementioned spikes.

B-tier and below: Saw blades, lava vents, pressure plates — honest hazards. They telegraph, they punish fairly, they let you feel responsible. We almost respect them.

The pendulum isn't hard because it swings fast. It's hard because it swings honestly — and you still mistimed it.

The verdict

Polarity gates won the cruelty crown by a landslide — 61% of voters ranked them S-tier. The studio's response when shown the data: a single emoji. We're watching them.

The full annotated tier list, with community-submitted death compilations, lives in the Discord. The Strategy Atlas has the actual timing windows for every hazard mentioned here.