Pinball

A tiny pinball table. Tap the left half for the left flipper, right half for the right. Three balls — rack up bumpers and slingshots before the drain.

How to play

A new ball drops from the top with a slight angle. Touch the left half of the screen to flick the left flipper up; touch the right half for the right flipper. You can use both at once. Bumpers (the round disks) are worth a lot and kick the ball away hard. Slingshots (the angled walls above the flippers) also score and bounce the ball back into play. If the ball falls between the two flippers it's drained — you have three balls total.

Tips & strategy

Don't flip at every ball you see. The novice instinct is to mash the flipper the moment the ball nears it, which usually sends the ball straight up the middle and right back down the drain. The good move is to wait: let the ball roll most of the way down the flipper toward the tip, then flip. The tip delivers way more force, and the angle off the tip points the ball toward the bumper field where the points live.

The bumper cluster is a money trap. Once a ball gets caught between two bumpers it bounces back and forth scoring a hundred points per bounce, and you can't influence it — just let it cook. Try to send the ball into the bumpers high and slow rather than fast and shallow. A fast shot tends to escape the cluster on the first bounce.

Slingshots are your safety net, not your weapon. The angled walls above the flippers will deflect any ball that hits them back upward — that buys you time even when you mistime a flip. But slingshots also accelerate the ball downward when it comes off them at a bad angle, so don't deliberately fire at them.

Dead-ball drain is the silent killer. If the ball loses all energy near the top and starts free-falling, no flipper input will save it from going straight down the center. Watch ball speed: when it's slowing, prep for an upward flip the moment it touches the flipper, not when it's already past the tip.