Rise to the Challenge

"Water, rising, must-get-to-higher-GROUND!"

— SpongeBob in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom^note If you're wondering why a sea creature is worried about drowning, it's actually goo that's rising up.

A video game level where you have to keep ascending to avoid a hazard that rises from below the screen.

The hazard may be water (due to Super Drowning Skills), a rising Lava Pit (with Convection Shmonvection, naturally), toxic waste, or anything else that will injure or kill you if you fall in.

May overlap with Auto Scrolling Levels, or a vertical form of Ratchet Scrolling. In these cases, the danger may simply be a rising Bottomless Pit.

Compare Down the Drain and Outrun the Fireball. The inverse is Descending Ceiling. For the sideways variation, see Advancing Wall of Doom. If a corridor or tunnel is involved, you get an Indy Escape. See also Lift of Doom where the rising threat is solid rather than fluid. A form of Escape Sequence.

Has nothing to do with The Loins Sleep Tonight.

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Examples:

• Two of the levels in the Alienators: Evolution Continues video game involve rising Deadly Gas.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation inverts this trope in "Slide Down The Shaft", a downward Auto-Scrolling Level where both the top and bottom of the screen are bordered by instant-death lasers.
• Battle for Wesnoth: The first half of "Out of the Frying Pan" of Under the Burning Suns campaign takes place in a cave that's flooding, forcing the elves to stay ahead of the rising tide while battling various threats along the way.
• In Bayonetta 2 there's a Verse that requires Bayonetta to use Panther Within in order to ascend the crumbling walkways of a small tower, while being pursued by a Golem.
• Bionic Commando on the Game Boy Color included a level where you had to destroy a fuel station. Destroying the system controlling the station caused it to start filling with flaming fuel which would kill you if you touched it.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, while primarily an RPG, has a few frantic climbs mixed in with its various other platforming interludes. The most memorable one happens right in the middle of the final boss battle!
• Castlevania:
  • In Castlevania: The Adventure, one of the sections in the third level has rising spikes.
  • Stage 2-2 of Castlevania: Bloodlines has water steadily climbing. As an Auto-Scrolling Level, you're free to climb up beyond the camera. In the next stage, you find the enemy that causes the water to rise, and need to kill it before you drown.
  • Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse has rising water in Stage 6-04(Y). After the first encounter with the Bone Dragon King, water will be rising and you must traverse through it. Then, you must finish off the boss before you end up drowning.
  • Super Castlevania IV has the last stage before the Tower of the Four Fiends, which has Simon traversing a large tower, constantly upwards. With floating platforms, stairs, until at one point a giant saw blade starts chasing him, ricocheting back and forth between the two walls of the tower until he reaches the top.
• The gameplay of Catherine is split between Vincent hanging out at the bar and his nightmares, which takes the form of him climbing a tower of blocks in order to outrun whatever monstrosity he's dreaming of.
• Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck has the Lava Tree. In this stage, Chuck Jr. has to climb to the top of a tree as it sinks into the lava that engulfs it. When Junior reaches the top, he has to fight an angry baby bird who tries to attack him with molten rocks he extracts from the lava.
• Comix Zone inverted this. The Big Bad set the comic book page on fire, and you had to race downward.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day:
  • The game offers an interesting take, taking place right after the defeat of the first major boss (Haybot) in the Barn Boys chapter: The basement of the farmhouse is a large cylinder that suddenly starts to fill up with water, which wouldn't be a problem if not for the loose wires that seem to be hanging out of the walls, which instantly electrify the water on contact. To advance, the player needs to make it to a safe spot and cut the wires to make the water safe to swim in again, then get to another safe spot before the water rises enough to touch another wire, and repeat the process. For extra difficulty, there is a wire right behind the first Context-Sensitive Button which many players have difficulty to spot in the first playthrough, so they may think they're safe with cutting down the wires ahead of them, but as they try to get across to the next platform... the water zaps them to death. All because of that tricky wire right behind you.
  • At one point during the It's War chapter, you have to outrun toxic waste while hurdling small pools of the same substance.
• In most vertical stages in the Contra series, you die if you touch the bottom of the screen. Same with most any Ratchet Scrolling vertical level.
• Cuphead has the fight against Rumor Honeybottoms, which takes place in an endless honeycomb/office building hybrid that is slowly filling with honey.
• Curse Crackers: For Whom The Belle Toils: While death walls can come from left or right (and in one case from above), they most commonly come from below. There's even a boss battle where you have to make your way up through a room with a rising death wall three times, and a harder version of it can be done again later.
• In Densetsu no Stafy 3, this is part of the final level in Crackling Volcano, where you have to outpace a rising lava flow.
• Devil May Cry 2: In Dante's fifth mission, the Infested Chopper chases him as he climbs a burning tower. The floors below are also slowly being engulfed by rising flames. Fortunately, the flames won't instantly kill you, but deal periodic damage if you don't climb back up.
• Donald Duck games:
  • Deep Duck Trouble has a section near the end of the Volcano where Donald has to climb to the top as the lava rises.
  • Donald in Maui Mallard has a few of these, notably trying to out-swim a vortex in a shipwreck and climbing away from a cloud of death in Hell.
• Donkey Kong Country:
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest:
    • "Slime Climb" is like this, except that since the DKC series doesn't feature Super Drowning Skills, the actual reason the player has to avoid the water is the Invincible Minor Minion Snapjaw lurking in it. Because Snapjaw could not be implemented on the Game Boy, touching the slime hurts you in Donkey Kong Land 2.
    • In the same game, "Toxic Tower," which does indeed involve rising toxic waste.
    • "Castle Crush" features a rising floor and several narrow passages that guaranteed that a slow Kong will be crushed. This level is also infamous for the Castle Crush glitch present in the original SNES version and the Wii U Virtual Console port capable of bricking the game if performed.
  • In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!:
    • There's Ripsaw Rage, which has a saw. Cutting vertically up two standing trees at once. At a certain altitude, it continues moving back and forth but stops ascending.
    • "Kong-Fused Cliffs", where the player must climb up ropes that have been lit on fire beneath them.
  • The latter half of the very last level of Donkey Kong Country Returns before the final boss has Donkey Kong race up a series of platforms to avoid a rising floor of molten lava. And the hidden temple level of World 6 exploits this mechanism as well.
• The finale of both versions of Ducktales has Scrooge racing Magica DeSpell and Flintheart Glomgold to his Number One Dime. Once he beats them however, he still has to escape the rising lava.
• In Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the event "Slime Climb" has rising slime that eliminates players, and an obstacle course that must be traversed to reach higher ground. Season 4 introduces "The Slimescraper", which is similar to Slime Climb but with a much more difficult layout to navigate.
• The Wall Jump-unlocking area in Fancy Pants Adventures has ink spilling from a pipe while you try and use your new-found wall-jumping ability to avoid it.
• The Flintstones video games:
  • In The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, the haunted castle has a large lava pit near the beginning of it that starts rising once Fred passes a certain point in the level. You must get Fred to the top of the tower before his toes are toasted, obviously.
  • The Flintstones (1993), the last level has rising water that Fred must outrun. If he touches or falls into it, he will immediately die.
• The freeware Platform Hell game Flood The Chamber consists of a large room that is slowly being filled with water. Touching the water results in an instant KO, forcing you to restart.
• Freedom Planet 2: During the "Magma Starscape" stage, your character must ascend the rising lava to reach the level's boss; Hundred Drillion. After the boss fight against it, you have to make your way up again out of the crater to complete the stage.
• In Ghost Trick, you have to escape rising tides of water, after the submarine you're trapped in gets hit.
• Glimmer In Mirror ends the Clockworks Area stage with an exit where multiple gears chases after you, and you must keep climbing and jumping upwards to avoid getting pulped alive.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force had an early room where a faulty circuit pierces a tank of biowaste and then proceeds to blow large chunks out of the floor, eventually releasing a metal beam leading up to the maintenance walkway above while the waste level is still rising. The G-Man eventually opens a door leading out of the room.
• Some of the later levels in Hannah And The Pirate Caves and the sequel, Hannah and the Ice Caves, have areas that fill with water as time passes. Falling into the water isn't an insta-kill as the player character can swim, but she's got precious little oxygen and needs to replenish it in the air pockets left after the maps flood.
• Hollow Knight has a rare heroic example. During the third phase of the fight against the Radiance, the player has to climb up above the clouds to reach her, while the Void and all the Shades from the Abyss rise up with them to help defeat her. Falling into the rising Void will still deal a mask of damage and will teleport the Knight to stable ground.
• In Ice Climber on the NES, the screen scrolls up as you climb, and no matter what might have been below that floor before, if you fall off the screen you die.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The Brinstar (acid) and Norfair (lava) stages. Norfair also includes giant waves of lava from the sides and background. It's ironic because Brinstar in the Metroid games is of course an Underground Level that doesn't involve this at all, though Norfair does have lava.
  • The Ice Climber themed stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee does this. In this case it's more like the other ones because it's auto-scrolling rather than only scrolling up as you climb (though climbing makes it go faster), but the frame of reference still determines where you die. Sometimes, just to confuse the player, the scrolling reverses, and you have to descend for your life.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl has the rising Rumble Falls. There's an Event Match whose chosen difficulty level will determine how fast the stage will rise.
• In Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, one level involves Indy scrambling to reach the top floor of the Raven Saloon to avoid an ever-rising sea of flames. Said saloon is rather ridiculously tall.
• Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu has this as part of the Lethal Lava Land stage. Naturally, the lava starts rising faster and faster as you frantically struggle to jump up the platforms.
• Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy has one instance of this in The Precursor City with toxic Dark Eco. Reaching the bottom of the city ends with Jak and Daxter landing on switch that starts flooding entire tubular section with it, and you have to ascend it before Dark Eco gets to you. Thankfully you have Blue Eco to your disposal, making you faster as well as attracting Precursor Orbs to you so you don't have to worry too much about it.

• In Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 3, Stage 3 features a section of this combined with The Walls Are Closing In.
• Kid Icarus (1986) has all of the climbing levels (2/3 of the game) do this — falling off the bottom of the screen causes your death. Even if there would be a platform an inch below the screen.
• The entire gameplay gimmick of The Killing Game Show, otherwise known as Fatal Rewind.
• In Kirby games:
  • A level in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards attempts to bury you in sand. It's a subversion since you can simply stand on the sand as it rises and let it carry you to the top.
  • A level in Kirby: Canvas Curse has you outrunning lava.
  • A rising sea of lava also appears near the end of Lava Landing, in Kirby's Epic Yarn
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance has the early moment in Raziel's viewpoint, as he escapes from the Spirit Realm. The Elder God cynically asks, "Where are you going, little soul?", after which deadly mist rises up and the player is forced to outclimb it.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, you have to climb a spiraling ramp around the inside of a tower, avoiding both rising water and the Helmaroc King. You fight him when you get to the roof.
• Looney Tunes (1992): In Stage 5, there's a section where Speedy Gonzales has to climb up the temple as a pool of lava rises, and must avoid falling in, as said lava kills him instantly.
• Marathon 2:
  • In Durandal, the fourth mission has you plunge down a lengthy pit and locate and destroy some controls in a geothermal power plant. Natrually the result is that the place is flooded with lava, so you're 'encouraged' to make best speed heading up and out. The final level, "All Roads Lead to Sol", has a similar lava escape.
  • Marathon Infinity does it again in "A Converted Church in Venice, Italy".
  • One level in the game mod Tempus Irae, "Mt Vesuvius II: Electric Boogaloo", is set in a volcano with rising lava, although slower than the above example.
• During the Firewalker mission in Mass Effect 2, Shepard and his/her squad escape from a research station nested inside a volcano as lava rises. Thankfully, they're in a vehicle built to handle brutal environments.
• Super Meat Boy: Levels: 7-13 and 7-13X (Rising liquid), 7-6X (Walls disappear) and 7-20X (Ceiling of sawblades)
• Mega Man 2 inverts this with Quick Man's infamous laser death trap, where the challenge is going down without getting blasted to death by the instant-kill lasers.
• Mega Man X often does this with magma.
  • A segment of Flame Stag's stage in Mega Man X2 immediately comes to mind.
  • And the ending of Mega Man X3.
  • Blaze Heatnix's area in Mega Man X6 combines this with yet another battle against the Nightmare Snakes, which you end up having to fight about four or five times throughout the entire stage.
  • Mega Man X8 did this both ways (I mean up and down!) with fire. The down part happens as the heroes climb down the volcano that Burn Rooster (Burn Kokekokker) makes his lair at. After Burn's defeat, it gets played straight where the magma rises and the gang must climb back up. Did Burn rig the place to flood with the burning-hot liquid rock at the moment of his defeat?
• Mega Man ZX has this in the "optional" Area K-5. "Optional" in quotes because not only are two of the needed items for a sidequest located in this area, if you're going for the Area K Subtank you need to pass through this part twice (once to slow down the flow of lava in order to reach the area where the button to unlock the gate that leads to the Subtank is, and the second time to get back to said unlocked gate once all is said and done, though at least this time it's easier since as said the lava flow is slowed down).
• One Planet Bunnera level in The Legendary Starfy has the titular starfish ascending by hopping from a floating bubble to another while a wall of fire rises after him inexorably.
• Melatonin's "Dream About Stress" has the main character climbing wooden ladders inside a volcano with rising lava, although the climbing is done automatically, and the only input is jumping onto a different ladder when one appears, or jumping straight up when the lava prepares for a sudden quick rise.
• Metal Slug:
  • Aeshi Nero (a giant cobra excavator mecha) from 2/X kept "swallowing" the pillar you're on forcing you to outclimb it via platforms, while you also had to dodge its various shots and shoot it until it dies. There's a Good Bad Bug that allows you to stay within its "mouth" without getting damaged and preventing it from advancing, but this only works in 2, not X.
  • The Slug you get at the beginning is almost totally useless as well: not only can you not press jump and shoot at the same time or the slug explodes, but the speed is only fractionally faster than that of the boss, which means you have to constantly jump to avoid death.
  • In the Hunt, a Shoot 'Em Up game created by some of the staff who later on started the Metal Slug series, also has one: a Living Statue that chases you up a sea ruin.
  • Also, there's a level in the first game where you have to go up. The screen doesn't scroll automatically, but since the game doesn't allow you to backtrack, any piece of soil that was left behind gives way to Bottomless Pits.
• Metroid:
  • In the original Metroid, Brinstar features acid lakes. Super Metroid, on the other hand, does not have them.
  • Super Metroid; The game's version of Norfair has several rooms where lava rises as soon as you enter. (Or in one case, as soon as you grab an upgrade at the far end.) In lower Norfair, Samus will also have to deal with acid that rises from the rooms that neither of her suits will protect her from. There's also rising acid in part of the final Escape Sequence, but it's kind of redundant since you're already running to escape an exploding planet, and because it's at the end of the game, your suit's been upgraded enough that the lava doesn't restrict your movement, and you have so many spare energy tanks that the damage inflicted by the acid is negligible, so it's really only there to make you panic.
• Games based on Mickey Mouse:
  • Mickey Mania, a video game in which you play through the settings of several classic Mickey Mouse cartoons, featured a memorable stage near the end (in the Prince and the Pauper world) with groundbreaking special effects in which you race up a spiral staircase to escape rising flames. (Why you're trying to get to the top of a tower while the rest of the building is on fire is anyone's guess.)
  • The first Prince and the Pauper stage also has rising fire in what may well be the most rapidly-rising non-cutscene instance of ths trope.
  • In Epic Mickey, one of the later stages has Mickey in a scene from Fantasia trying to outpace a rising flood of paint thinner.
• On the NES, Ninja Gaiden 3 has a segment in 2-2 where Ryu Hayabusa must outrun rising lava in a cave that's also an autoscroller.
• The Alden's Tower level in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale will do this across three levels of the tower before arriving at the top: anyone unable to ascend is transported to a fixed spot higher in the stage, stunned for several seconds (perfectly defenseless for a Super kill). The developers had the sense to include blinking arrows as a warning.
• In Ori and the Blind Forest, the escape sequence of the Ginso Tree has you trying to get out before a geyser within erupts, requiring you to use what you've learned so far to stay ahead of the rapidly rising water level.
• Pankapu: The final level in Archipelago Of The Winds, "Ardent Abysses", has Pankapu racing against rising lava to reach the end of the level.
• Party Animals: On the Red October stage (a military submarine), the water gradually rises as the submarine sinks, forcing players closer together as they try to avoid drowning, eventually leaving only the masts above water.
• Psychonauts. "The Meat Circus", which features the rising water level, is frustrating. This is mainly due to the game engine's inability to deal with the precision platforming being demanded.
• Rainbow Islands:
  • The first game has you moving one of two (previously cursed) boys named Bub and Bob up a series of seven sinking islands, with a harsh time limit and some Super Drowning Skills to speed you on your way.
  • Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure is similar, except instead of water, the floor is replaced with a Mad Scientist's killing machine, which changes weapons as you race up the tower.
• Four or five instances in Ratchet & Clank, depending on whether or not the first example counts as 2 instances:
  • In Blackwater City in the first game and its remake, you have to outrun rising water in a tunnel. Ratchet can both swim and hold his breath, but not for long, and gets realistically slowed down when swimming or wading. The only chance to get out before drowning is to keep ahead of the water. Annoyingly, not so long after this passage, he gets an O2 Mask...
  • The last of the Qwark vid-comics in Up Your Arsenal justifies this as you're outrunning rising acid.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters has the version with some sickly green liquid, presumably acid or toxic waste.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus features a couple of occasions on planet Silox where you must escape from rising water. Which is incredibly funny given that, as stated above, Ratchet can swim AND has an O2 mask (as the section out in space in the first level proves), meaning that rising water shouldn't even BE an issue except for the fact that Insomniac is refusing to add swimming back in. Made even funnier when Ratchet is saying "That was a close one" as if he's forgotten how to swim completely.
• Rayman:
  • Rayman had a jungle level and a mountain level with plain old regular water that was rising, but there was also a mountain level where the hero was trapped between slowly descending water and a quicker Descending Ceiling. The idea was to use Rayman's hair-helicopter to cut through ropes tied to this ceiling so the weights attached to the ceiling would drop into the water, and the ceiling would stop descending before it pressed Rayman into the water and drowned him.
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape also employed the piranha justification.
  • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc did this with lava.
• Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The second section of Tassel Town, being chased up a tower by a giant Sand Worm whose mouth is constantly below Shantae, until she reaches the tower exit.
• In Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, there's an optional challenge where Specter Knight must climb the Tower of Fate while staying ahead of a rising electrical current.
• Skully have this happening in the volcano stage, after Terry accidentally pisses off Wanda the Fire Elemental, who then raises the lava level within the area. Get ready to climb and jump to avoid A Molten Date with Death!
• Sly Cooper:
  • The final boss battle of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus has a phase in which you must climb up a tower that's sinking in lava in order to reach the boss.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, a derelict ship must be climbed in a hurry before water catches the player.
• The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror: In the fourth level, "Vlad All Over", there's a section where thorny vines start growing in the Vampire Mr. Burns' castle, and will instantly kill Homer if he gets caught in them. Homer must climb to the top of the castle as the vines grow.
• The first Smurfs game for the SNES had a volcano level with rising lava (Act 12).
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The infamous Labyrinth Zone "boss" for the original game is nothing more than you chasing Robotnik up one of these, water rising behind you with no air bubbles to save you if you lag behind. And lag you will, as the way is also lined with retracting spikes and fireball-throwing gargoyles. The game does show some mercy, however, as once you reach the top, Robotnik runs away, leaving Sonic to hit the end-of-zone animal cage and head for Star Light Zone. You ARE able to defeat him if you're good, though. This "fight" was revisited in Sonic the Hedgehog 4, this time with a real boss at the end.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2:
    • The game has a twist on this in Chemical Plant Zone. Mega Mack doesn't instantly kill Sonic, but Sonic can't breathe in it, so the further up you go, the worse it is when you fall, to the point where falling to places you could once survive is now your doom.
    • Hill Top Zone, in addition to rising floors, also had rising lava.
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles:
    • Sandopolis Zone Act 2 has an interesting twist on this concept. There is a section where you must climb your way to the top quickly, lest you get crushed by rising sand (which acts as a solid surface for no explained reason). The twist is that the source of the sand is plugged up, until you bust it open yourself. You must do so, however, because it's impossible to reach the ledges above without the rising sand.
    • Near the end of Knuckles' version of Launch Base Zone, the water level rises, and you have to rush to avoid drowning.
    • One of the three bonus stages is a pinball-type arena with a glowing, upward-climbing double helix at the bottom that continuously rises upward. This is the only one of the three bonus stages that the player can actually "beat" by reaching the top of the stage before getting caught in the helix. In order to move up, the player has to fling off energy spheres, and the smaller bubbles release the gumball prizes, which rise up and away. The higher up you get, the better the prizes.
  • Sonic Heroes did this with "energy" in the Power Plant stage.
  • Sonic Advance 3 has the boss for the Twinkle Snow Zone, which combines this with Platform Battle for extra frustration. Mercifully, the platforms don't fall until you jump off of them; just don't fall off (or get knocked off).
• In the original Splatoon's Squid Jump minigame, you have to outjump a quickly-rising flood of lethal purple ink.
• 'Splosion Man does this periodically with Spikes of Doom and especially with water, with the justification that since you're a creature made of fire, water isn't so healthy for you.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the Sega Genesis had a level where destroying a computer caused the level to fill with a flaming liquid.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • New Super Mario Bros.: A few levels, including a fortress level with rising lava. There's a code that enables "Challenge Mode". When used on side-scrolling stages, it disables scrolling left, making the experience more like the first Super Mario Bros. game (as well as allowing you to occasionally get into an Unwinnable situation). In vertical-scrolling stages however, it turns falling off the bottom of the screen at any time into an instant death, making those vertically-scrolling stages into Rise To The Challenge levels that move at your own pace.
  • Super Mario Galaxy: There is a lava one. It's technically because of the ground sinking instead of the lava rising, but functionally it plays like any regular example; then, you have to redo it with only one HP. In the same game, there is another that is somewhere between this and Descending Ceiling. Mario is upside down to the player so it is hard to say whether the sand is the floor or the ceiling.
  • Super Mario Maker 2: It is possible to make levels of this kind by making lava or poison rise constantly in a vertical sub-area and prevent it from lowering its level afterwards. For levels without the harmful element present, it is still possible to invoke this trope by simply making the screen scroll up.
  • Mario Party Advance: The minigame Stair Scare has two dueling characters run upstairs after the tower they're in suffers an earthquake. The characters have to run by rapidly tapping A to avoid getting caught by the crumbling stairs and falling down. Whoever gets first into the hot-air balloon to escape wins.
  • Mario Party DS: One of the mini-games is called "Crater Crawl". In it, Mario and his friends are inside a volcano, trying to climb to the top as the lava inside it rises. Pressing the A button repeatedly makes them climb, and they also have to watch out for pillars of lava that shoot up, which are indicated by bubbles. The longer at least two players survive, the faster the lava will bubble.
  • Mario Party 9: After the castle is destroyed in Magma Mine, the lava level rises up two spaces every time someone rolls the Dice Block, so players must roll high enough to outrun it. Further complicating matters are spaces that make the lava rise even higher if players land on them. If the lava catches up with the team, the current Captain will lose half of their Mini-Stars.
  • Mario Party: Island Tour: In the minigame Sinking Feeling, the player use AR Cards (or downloaded images of them in tablets or handheld phones) to summon a metallic tower that is sinking into a body of lava that is displayed on the 3DS. They have to control their character to climb the tower, which gradually earns new parts as the old ones sink, to avoid lava for as long as possible. while some of the incoming parts are climbable in all their areas, some have obstructions that are impassable, so the character has to be guided through the climbable parts. If the minigame is played solo, the minigame ends when the character is caught by lava, and the height climbed is shown (if the character climbs high enough, the'll be able to break the current record). If it's played between two or more people, then the last one standing wins.
  • Mario Party 10:
    • Bowser's Clawful Climb places Team Mario on a tower being chased by Bowser from underneath, and they must climb as fast as they can to avoid as much damage as possible. Bowser climbs the tower segments at a time, and any players who get caught will lose a whopping three hearts.
    • Chaos Castle has a portion where Team Mario must scale a series of large walls. In Bowser Party, they have to do this while Bowser is right behind them, so they can't afford to waste time.
• Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death: Some rooms contain lava that starts rising once Sydney collects the item located therein.
• The Talos Principle: If you chose to climb the tower past the fifth floor, above the dark cloud, you enter a single long puzzle that takes you up several vertical levels. But that cloud begins to rise as you work through it, and failure to complete the puzzle before the cloud consumes you will cause you to die and restart the puzzle.
• Tiny Toon Adventures games:
  • In Buster's Hidden Treasure's aptly-named Lava Cave area, there is, naturally, a part where you have to outrun rising lava.
  • The very end of the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level in Buster Busts Loose. After Buster successfully retrieves the next episode's script from the Pinball Fortress, the fortress begins to collapse, which leaves him to run up the walls to escape. Of course, the bottom of the screen is fatal.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Montana's Movie Madness has two of these examples; the first is in the Samurai Saga, wherein Buster has to avoid a rising and falling flow of One-Hit Kill water in the bath house, and the second is in the Monster Movie, wherein Buster has to climb to the top of the stage to avoid rising flows of the same kind of water twice.
• Tower of Greed involves climbing an upward-scrolling tower where if you get caught at the bottom of the screen when it's scrolling (or miss a jump and fall) you die.
• Trine does this with the last level, with the addition that the boss is constantly following you, conjuring objects to block your way, to screw with your jumps or to break platforms.
• Ultimate Chicken Horse's Transformidable Update added an option to have slowly-rising lava on any level. You can also have the lava come from another direction, making it an Advancing Wall of Doom or Descending Ceiling.
• Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 has an advancing lava wall in the first level of Stove Canyon. It seems ridiculously easy to outrun at first, until you realize that the reason for this is that there is a hidden Treasure Room key in this level.
• In most Worms games, after the round timer expires the land often begins to slowly sink into the water.
• In Yoshi's Crafted World, at one point in Mr. Geary's factory, Yoshi must climb to the top of a vat as the lava inside it rises.

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Wait... Why would SpongeBob need to avoid water?

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