Pin Spin — a free spinning-wheel timing game you play with one thumb

A wheel turns above you and a stack of pins waits below it. Tap and the top pin flies straight up and buries itself in the rim wherever the rim happens to be at that instant. There is nothing to aim — the pin always goes to the same place — so the only thing you control is when. Land a pin in clear space and it stays there, turning with the wheel. Land one on top of a pin already in the wheel and the two heads smash together and the run ends.

That is the whole rule, and it contains the entire difficulty curve: every pin you successfully place becomes an obstacle for the pins that follow. A wheel with three pins in it is forgiving. The same wheel eight pins later has half its circumference spoken for, and the safe arcs are sweeping past the muzzle in a couple of hundred milliseconds each. Clear the whole stack and the wheel spins away and a fuller, faster one arrives. It is free, needs no download, and plays the same on a phone, a tablet or a keyboard.

How to play

• Tap anywhere to fire the loaded pin. On a keyboard use Space, Enter, ↑ or W.
• The pin always flies to the bottom of the wheel — the dashed line shows the path. You choose the moment, never the direction.
• Two pin heads must not touch. If the head you fire lands close enough to touch one already in the wheel, both flash red and the run is over.
• Empty the stack at the bottom of the screen to clear the level. The next wheel starts with more pins already in it and turns faster.
• Do not dawdle. The wheel winds up while a pin sits in the muzzle — the arc on the hub shows how much wind-up you have spent, and firing winds it back down.
• Squeeze a pin in beside another for a TIGHT: the pitch climbs with the streak, and a tight pin is how you keep the open side of the wheel open.
• Your score is every pin you landed, so a level you die halfway through still counts. Restarting is one tap, and your best five runs stay on your own device.

Why clumping your pins is better than spreading them

The instinct is to space pins out evenly — it looks tidy, and each new pin seems to have the most room. It is the wrong instinct, and working out why is most of the skill in this game.

Think about what a pin actually costs you. Each one poisons a small arc of wheel on either side of itself, and a shot that lands in that arc kills you. If your pins are evenly spread, every remaining gap is the same middling size, and every shot for the rest of the level has to be threaded into one of them — a target with a wall on both sides. If instead you stack your pins against each other, all those poisoned arcs overlap into one dead zone, and everything else on the wheel is a single wide, safe sweep. The cost is that adding to a clump is a precise shot; the payoff is that it is the last precise shot you have to take, because the pins after it can go anywhere in the open arc.

There is a second reason clumping is easier than it looks. A gap between two pins has to be entered and exited — you can be early or late. The edge of a clump only has a wall on one side, so half the ways of getting it wrong are simply not fatal. Landing slightly further out into the open costs you nothing at all. That asymmetry is what makes a good player's wheel look like a comb with one thick tooth rather than a snowflake.

There is a limit to how long you get to think about all this. The wheel winds up while a pin is sitting in the muzzle, and it winds back down the moment you fire, so waiting for a perfect gap makes that gap arrive faster than it would have. Without that, patience is simply the correct play and the game turns into a staring contest: the same computer player that fires into the first safe arc it sees scores about ten pins, while one that always holds out for the widest arc scores a hundred and fifty and takes nine minutes to do it. The wind-up prices the difference, which is what turns "when do I shoot" into an actual decision rather than an obvious one.

The wheel is also not always turning at one speed. From the third level it starts to breathe — slowing almost to a stop and then whipping round — and later it reverses direction without warning, though never while a pin of yours is in the air. Both changes announce themselves the first time you meet them, because the rhythm you have learned is the only thing you actually own in this game, and taking it away silently would just read as the game cheating.

More games

For more one-tap timing try Color Gate or Timber Chop, and for a steadier hand try the Aim Trainer. Or browse all games.