When things go wrong

Runway has no accounts. When you join a team or create a race, your browser is handed a key and keeps it in its own storage. That key is the only thing that says the phone belongs to your team, or that it is the host.

Anything that wipes the browser’s storage throws the key away, and the server cannot hand the same one back.

What loses your place

Cause
Clearing browsing data, cookies, or site data	Wipes every key this browser holds
A private or incognito window	Forgets everything when the window closes
Switching browser or phone	The key stays behind on the old one
Opening the installed app instead of the browser you joined in	On iPhone, the home-screen app keeps its own storage

Before you set off

Join in the browser you will race in, outside a private window, and leave its data alone until the race is over.

A player lost their place

The team is fine. Its coins, power-ups, and progress live on the server, not on the phone. The player only needs to join the team again.

Before the race starts, open the lobby again, enter your name, and tap your squad. No code is needed.

Once the race is live, you need your team’s code, and it comes from a teammate who is still in:

1. On their race screen, the teammate scrolls down to Your Squad and taps Invite.

2. They tap Copy Teammate Link and send it to you. The link carries the team code.

3. You open the link itself, enter your name, and tap the squad. Pasting it into the box on the home screen does not work here; it drops the team code.

You are back on the team with everything it has earned. The old phone may still be listed as a member; it does no harm.

Nobody left to ask

If every phone on a team has lost its place, or the player was racing alone, the team cannot be recovered. The race still takes new squads, so you can start a fresh one, but it begins from nothing.

The host lost their place

Hosting belongs to the browser that created the race, and there is no way to move it or get it back.

When	What happens
Still in the lobby	Nobody can press start. Create a new race and share the new code
Race is live	Teams keep racing. Nobody can end the race early, settle a dispute, or use the host tools. The race ends by itself six hours after it was created

If the host was also racing on a team, they can rejoin that team like any other player. That gets them back into the race, not back into hosting.

A solo run lost its place

A solo run is hosted and raced by the same phone, so it cannot be picked up again. The run ends by itself after 24 hours and no time is posted. Start a new run.

After the race

An ended race cannot be joined, so a lost place cannot be reclaimed once the race is over.

Next

Set up a raceThe lobby, the race code, and the start button.

Run your own instancePostgres and MinIO in Docker, the Go server and worker, and the Vite dev server from source.

Runway is in Alpha release

Rules, data formats, and APIs change without notice, and databases may be wiped between releases. Runway is an independent, fan-made game, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Jet Lag: The Game, Wendover Productions, or Half as Interesting.