How to play

Keep the ball in play with the paddle and knock out every block. A run is three boards. You have three balls and 180 seconds of play for all of them.

Controls

• Mouse: the paddle follows the pointer across the board. Click to launch.
• Touch: slide on the board or on the strip below it. Tap to launch. In Settings, Drag moves the paddle by how far you slide, so your thumb can stay below the board.
• Keyboard: ← → or A D move the paddle, Space launches and continues, P or Esc pauses.

The paddle has a top speed. Mouse, touch and keyboard all move it at the same capped speed, so it never jumps through the ball.

Aiming

Where the ball meets the paddle decides where it goes. The centre sends it straight up; the ends send it out at up to 60 degrees. The ball always keeps some upward speed, so it can never get stuck sliding sideways.

Each ball starts resting on the paddle. Before you launch, a dotted line shows the published launch direction for that ball. It comes from the run itself, so it is the same on every device.

Blocks

Plain painted blocks break with one hit. Blocks with a brass band and two rivets take two hits: the first hit cracks the band and knocks out the rivets.

Scoring

• 100 points for every hit that knocks a point off a block.
• 500 points for each board you clear.
• 10 points for each ball you still have when the run ends.

There are no time bonuses, multipliers or random drops. If two runs score the same, they are tied. Boards cleared and time used are shown alongside.

How a run ends

A run ends when you clear the third board, when you lose your third ball, or when the 180 seconds of play run out. The clock only runs while the ball is moving: not while it rests on the paddle, not between boards and never while paused. After clearing a board, the next one starts when you choose Continue.

The daily run

Every UTC day has its own run of three boards, published in advance in a fixed list that never changes once released. Everyone who plays it gets the same boards, order and launch directions. It changes at midnight UTC.

Your first finished attempt is your result for that day. Play it again as often as you like: replays are labelled and never replace your result. Past days can be played from Today; they show your result but don’t count for streaks.

A daily counts for your streak when you start it on its own day and finish it before 02:00 UTC the next morning.

Pausing and resumed runs

Press P, use the pause button, switch to another tab or leave the window and the game pauses immediately. Nothing moves while paused and no time is counted. When you resume, a short countdown gives you a moment to get ready; the ball keeps its direction and speed.

A run you paused or reloaded is marked as resumed, because a break changes the conditions. Resumed scores are kept apart from uninterrupted ones. Your run is saved on this device as you play, so you can close the page and pick it up later.

What “the same for everyone” means

The game runs its physics in fixed steps of 1/120 of a second, using only arithmetic that every browser does identically. The same inputs at the same steps always produce the same game, on any device. Every shipped run has a recorded set of inputs that clears it within the time and ball limits, so we know each one can be won.

Scores live in your browser and are not checked by a server. Mouse, touch and keyboard feel different, and so do screen sizes, so treat comparisons with friends as friendly rather than official.