Fire the ball up the side lane and use the two flippers to keep it out of
the gap at the bottom. But the real game is up the middle: shoot the
🚀 launch bay, fly a mission, and get promoted.
👆 Playing
🚀 Hold and let go to launch the ball — how long you hold changes how
hard. ⬅️ and ➡️ work the flippers. You can also just tap the left or
right half of the table. 🫱 Nudge shoves the whole table. Press the left half of the button
to shove left, the right half to shove right.
💪 Hit it with the TIP
This is the one thing worth practising. The end of the flipper is moving
three times as fast as the base, so a ball caught on the tip goes flying
and a ball caught near the hinge just dribbles. Let the ball come to you.
🚀 Missions, and how to get promoted
The strip under your score always says what mission is on offer. Change it — knock down the three satellite panels on the
right. Start it — shoot the ball into the 🚀 launch bay up the
middle. It glows when it is ready.
Then do what the mission asks before the TIME bar runs out. Finish
it and you are promoted one rank — and your rank IS your score
multiplier, so an Admiral scores six times what a Recruit does.
Nine ranks: Recruit, Pilot, Ensign, Lieutenant, Commander, Captain,
Flight Leader, Wing Commander, Admiral.
⛽ The fuel gauge
A mission burns fuel. The tank holds about 45 seconds and the
longest missions run to sixty — so on those you have to go and get
more, which means breaking off from the mission to do it. That is the
decision the gauge is there for.
Refuel by rolling through the F U L lanes at the very top. Filling
the tank pays a bonus too.
🌀 The shots
↱ ↰ Ramps — the two curved lanes. They cross, so the left one
feeds your right flipper and the other way round. ◎ Wormholes — the lane down each outside edge. Going round one is
a lap. ✳️ Reactors — the three bumpers. They score every time and they
are how the shorter missions get done. 🛰️ Panels — two banks of three. The left bank relights your
kickbacks; the right bank changes the mission on offer.
⟋ The little flippers
There are four flippers, not two. The small pair higher up the
table are on the same two buttons as the big ones — press left and
both left flippers go up together, exactly like a real machine.
They are there to catch a ball coming down the edge before it ever
reaches the bottom, and put it back up the table.
⌇ The return rails
A thin rail runs beside each big flipper. It splits the bottom of the
table into two: inside the rail the ball comes back down to your
flipper, and outside it — the side lane — the ball is on its way
out unless a kickback saves it.
The rail also closes the gap behind the flipper, so a ball can no longer
slip round the back of it where you cannot hit it.
🟢 Kickbacks
The two lanes either side of the flippers are where balls get lost. A
green ▲ means that lane will fire the ball back up instead. Using
it spends it; clear the left bank of panels, or fill the tank, to
light them again.
On 🌱 Sprout they never run out.
⚠️ Careful with the nudge
Three nudges and the table TILTS: the flippers stop working until
the ball drains. The little ⚠️ marks at the top tell you how close you
are, and they fade if you leave it alone.
🙂 Levels
🌱 Sprout: gentle gravity, five balls, a long ball save, and
kickbacks that never run out. 🧭 Scout: quicker, three balls, and a kickback you have to earn
back. 🏆 Ace: fast, and barely any ball save.
A level sets the switches in ⚙️ Settings; change any and you are
playing your own mix.
🗺️ The strip down the side
The table is taller than your screen, so the view follows the ball. The
strip on the right is the whole table: the bright box is what you are
looking at, and the white dots are the balls. If a ball goes off the top
of the view, an arrow at the edge says where it is and how far.