Pinball — free browser pinball, two flippers and three balls

One table, three balls, and nothing to learn beyond which half of the screen you are holding. The left half works the left flipper and the right half works the right, so the whole game is playable with two thumbs on a phone or the arrow keys on a desktop.

Points come from three bumpers at the top, four drop targets across the middle and the slingshots above the flippers. What ties them together is the multiplier: it climbs one step for every five bumper hits and it resets the moment the ball drains. Everything on the table is worth more on a long ball than on a short one, which is the whole reason to keep one alive. Free, instant, and it starts the moment the page does.

How to play

• Hold the left half of the screen for the left flipper, the right half for the right. Arrow keys work too.
• Each ball launches itself up the lane on the right. You have three.
• Bumpers pay 100, drop targets 250, slingshots 25 — all multiplied.
• Drop all four targets and you take 2,000, multiplied, and the targets stand back up.
• The multiplier climbs every five bumper hits, up to 5×, and goes back to 1× when the ball drains.
• The gap between the flippers is the drain. There is no tilt and no nudge.

The one habit that doubles a pinball score

Almost everyone starts by flapping. The ball comes down, both flippers go up and down as fast as the player can manage, and the ball goes wherever the last random contact sent it — usually straight down the middle. It feels like doing something. It is the worst way to play.

The habit that replaces it is the trap: hold the flipper up, let the ball come to rest against it, and only then let go and swing. A ball sitting still on a raised flipper has no velocity of its own, so when you drop and flip, the shot goes where the flipper points rather than where the ball happened to be heading. That is the difference between hitting a target you chose and hitting whatever the table gave you.

The second habit is knowing what to aim at, and here the arithmetic is unusually clear. A bumper pays 100. A drop target pays 250, and clearing the set of four pays 2,000 on top — so the four targets are worth 3,000 between them against 100 a bumper. But bumpers are what build the multiplier, and the multiplier applies to the targets. The order that pays is therefore bumpers first, targets second: twenty bumper hits take you to 5×, and only then is the target set worth 15,000 instead of 3,000.

The third is simply that the multiplier is a countdown you cannot see. It resets when the ball drains, so a ball you keep alive for ninety seconds is worth several times one you lose in fifteen, no matter how well you shoot in those fifteen. When the choice is between a risky shot and a safe one early in a ball, take the safe one. If you like the physics without the flippers, Pool is a full table of ball-on-ball collisions and Brick Breaker is the same reflection problem with a paddle.

More games

More from 🕹️ Arcade & one-tap games:

• Car Parking — Ten bays and a clock. The car only turns while it is moving, which is why reversing in is easier than driving in.
• Stack Rush — One tap: drop the sliding block on the tower. Miss the edge and it gets sliced. How high can you go?
• Snake — The timeless classic. Eat, grow, speed up, and try not to become your own worst obstacle.
• Flappy Dot — One tap to flap, endless pipes to dodge. Gaps shrink as you score — medals at 10, 25, 50 and 100.
• Brick Breaker — Smash all 48 bricks with a bouncing ball — aim off the paddle's edge for sharp angles. Three lives, faster every level.

Or browse all games.