Pinball Arcade

How to Play Pinball Arcade

Pinball Arcade is a fast single-player arcade table you can play right in your browser. A steel ball drops onto the playfield and gravity keeps pulling it toward the drain at the bottom; your job is to keep it alive with two flippers and pile up as many points as possible before all three balls are gone. Everything on the table — the glowing pop-bumpers, the angled slingshots, the top rollover lights and the drop-target bank — is worth points, and the ball reacts to real, deterministic physics, so a well-timed flip can send it flying to the very top of the table. No download and no sign-up: just launch and play, on a phone or a desktop.

Goal

Score as many points as you can with your three balls. There is no level to finish and no opponent — every game is a race against your own best score. Points come from hitting the scoring features around the table, and the leaderboard remembers your highest total, so the aim is a clean, greedy run that keeps the ball in play and hammers the high-value targets. Scores are capped at 99,999.

The table

The table is portrait, taller than it is wide. On the right is the shooter (plunger) lane where each new ball waits. The upper playfield holds three round pop-bumpers in a cluster and three rollover lights across the top. In the middle sits a bank of three drop targets. Down low, just above the drain, two angled slingshots flank a pair of flippers that meet over the centre drain, with an outlane on each side. A ball that falls between or past the flippers is lost.

Controls

• Launch: hold the plunger to charge it — press and hold the Space bar (or the down arrow), or on touch press and hold the bottom-right corner of the table. A meter fills in the lane; release to fire the ball with that much power. A quick tap gives a soft launch, a full charge a hard one.
• Flippers (keyboard): the Left Arrow or Z raises the left flipper; the Right Arrow or M raises the right flipper. Hold a key to keep that flipper up, release to drop it.
• Flippers (touch/mouse): tap or hold the LEFT half of the table for the left flipper and the RIGHT half for the right flipper. You can hold both at once.
• New Game restarts immediately with a fresh set of three balls. The game also auto-pauses nothing — the ball is always live once launched — so keep your fingers ready.

Scoring

Points are awarded the instant the ball touches a scoring feature. Chaining features together keeps the ball bouncing and the score climbing:

• Pop-bumpers: 100 points each, and they kick the ball away hard, which can set up more hits.
• Slingshots: 50 points each, snapping the ball back up toward the centre of the table.
• Top rollovers: 500 points for each light you switch on; lighting all three at once awards a 5,000-point bonus and relights them for another pass.
• Drop-target bank: 100 points for each of the three targets you knock down, plus a 2,500-point bonus for completing the bank — after which all three pop back up to be knocked down again.
• Extra ball: the first time your score reaches 20,000 you earn one extra ball (once per game). The total score is capped at 99,999.

Rules

• Each game gives you three balls. When a ball drains, the next one docks in the shooter lane, ready to launch.
• Ball saver: for the first 5 seconds after a ball is launched, a drain returns the ball to the lane instead of costing you a ball — so an unlucky early drain is forgiven.
• Extra ball is awarded only once per game, the first time you cross 20,000 points. It is played before moving on to your next numbered ball.
• The game ends when your last ball drains after the ball saver has expired. Your final score is submitted to the leaderboard (capped at 99,999).

Tips & strategy

• Cradle the ball: catch it on a raised flipper and let it settle, then flip to aim a controlled shot instead of flailing.
• Go for the bank early: completing the three drop targets is worth 2,500 and resets, so it is one of the fastest ways to build a big score.
• Light the rollovers: sweeping all three top lights on a single trip up the table is 5,000 points and re-arms instantly — great when the ball is bouncing around the top.
• Watch the outlanes: nudging the ball toward the centre with a late flip is safer than a wild swing, which can fling it straight down an outlane.

Frequently asked questions