Time crunch level

A time race level is a Chip's Challenge level theme where the primary puzzle is to identify and race through a valid path to the exit before the time runs out. In many cases, time race levels are made artificially difficult by the tight time limit and become trivial if additional time were to be granted. There are only a handful of time race levels in the original game, whereas the theme is more common in Chip's Challenge 2.

In Chip's Challenge 2, more complex time races are possible due to the Time Bonus, Time Penalty and Time Toggle tiles. These tiles add 10 seconds to the game clock, deduct 10 seconds to the game clock and pause or resume the game clock respectively.