Match three to pop. But the real damage is cutting the support — every ball left hanging falls, worth up to 7× the points on a big drop.
CPU
Duel length
Series
Look
Board view
These apply to duels. Score Attack has no clock — the level ladder ends it. Online uses whatever the first player into the room picked. "Maximize mine" hides the opponent's board down to just their name and score, in Versus CPU and Play a Friend — tap that bar any time to bring it back.
3
Three in a line clears. Same colour, touching — they pop and bank you points.
↓
Gravity does the heavy lifting. Shoot out the balls holding a cluster up and the whole thing drops. A dropped ball starts at triple points and climbs with the size of the drop, up to 7×.
✦
Some marbles aren't marbles. A row-clearer takes its whole row; a bomb takes everything around it. Land a shot against one to set it off — and a blast that catches another sets that one off too. Your own cannon also loads four you aim yourself: fire burns where you land it, an imitator takes the color it touches, dry ice shatters what it touches, and a sniper hits one marble you name.
▾
The ceiling comes down whatever you do. On your shots, or on a clock if you stall — whichever runs out first. Watch the line along the top rail.
!
Every ball you clear lands on them. It sticks to the underside of their stack and grows it down toward their gun. You get a moment's warning before it arrives — clear something in that window and you cancel it.
Anyone who types the same code lands in the same room. Keep using one code and the room keeps your running record.
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1:00
How to play
Two minutes of reading, then never again.
The shot
On a phone: drag anywhere on your board to aim — the ball doesn't fire when you lift your thumb. Tap to fire. On a keyboard: move the mouse to aim and click, or use the keys shown under the board.
The three small balls at the bottom are what's loading next. Plan two ahead and you'll stop wasting shots.
Clearing
Three touching balls of one colour pop. That's the floor, not the goal.
The real damage is gravity. Anything left hanging with nothing above it falls off the board — and falling balls are worth triple. So don't shoot at the cluster you want gone; shoot at the balls holding it up.
Bombs and row-clearers
Every so often the ceiling delivers a marble that doesn't play by the colour rules. You'll spot them straight away — a dark face with a pulsing ring.
The cyan one with the arrows takes out its entire row. It's the common one, roughly one every few ceiling rows.
The amber one with the spark is a bomb. Rare, and it takes out everything within two marbles of itself.
You don't shoot them — they sit in the stack and you set them off by landing a shot against one. The marble you fired is spent doing it. And if a blast catches another special, that one goes off too: chain a bomb into a row-clearer and the board falls apart.
Whatever they take out counts as yours — points either way. In a duel, what really hurts your opponent is cutting marbles loose and dropping them; a color match mostly clears your own board and holds off what is queued against you.
Clearing the whole board
Take the last ball off the board and you bank a big bonus and a fresh, deeper board drops in. In a duel it also dumps a load of garbage on your opponent — it's the hardest hit in the game. In Score Attack it's worth a free level.
Levels (Score Attack)
Every 30 balls you clear puts you up a level, and every level makes the game worse for you in two ways: the ceiling creeps down sooner — every six shots at Level 1, every two by Level 9 — and new colours join the board. You start on four colours and end on seven.
The ceiling also comes down on a clock, not just on your shots — whichever runs out first. It's a slow clock, about four and a half seconds per shot's worth, so playing at any normal pace you'll always hit the shot count long before the timer. It's there so that stopping doesn't stop the game. The thin line along the top rail shows how close the next row is; it turns amber just before it lands.
The colours are the real killer. More colours means matching clusters are rarer, so you clear less per shot while the ceiling comes faster. Points scale with the level too, so surviving high is worth far more than playing safe low.
There's no winning it. The run ends when the board reaches your gun — the only question is what level you got to.
Fighting back
In a duel, everything you clear lands on your opponent — stuck to the underside of their stack, growing it down toward their gun. You get a short warning before it arrives: clear something in that window and you cancel part of it. Never all of it, though. Half of every clear always gets through.
Let the stack reach your gun line and you're buried.
Fire marbles
Now and then your own cannon loads a molten one — you'll see it glowing two shots out in the reload queue, so you can save it for the worst part of the board.
It doesn't stick and it doesn't care about color. Wherever it lands the fire catches and spreads outward, burning everything nearby down to smoke — it takes a moment to reach the outer marbles, so you can watch it travel. Land it on a bomb and you get both.
Imitators
The pale shifting one has no color of its own. Wherever it lands it copies the color of whatever it touched, and from then on it is an ordinary marble of that color. It pauses for a beat while it takes the color, so you can watch the change happen.
That is how you finish a cluster that has been sitting there waiting for one more. Land an imitator against three greens and all four go. Land it against nothing at all and it takes a color already on the board.
Dry ice
The dry-ice marble freezes and shatters the marbles it is actually touching — color no object. You'll see the ice take hold, cracks run across it, then the whole thing break apart. It doesn't stick, and the marble itself is spent doing it.
It is smaller than fire: a couple of marbles instead of a whole neighborhood. So it isn't how you break a stack — it is the right answer to the one marble that is in your way.
The sniper
The gunmetal one with a red crosshair is a sniper. Drag to put the crosshair on any marble — even deep in the pile — and let go to hit exactly that one. Hit a bomb and it goes off.
There is no aim line and nothing to bounce: you name the marble, and the shot takes it. A magnifier floats above your finger showing the cells around the crosshair, so your thumb never covers the target, and the marble the shot would take is the only one on the board still lit. Let go with nothing under the crosshair and nothing happens — the sniper stays loaded.
You start every game with exactly one — Score Attack, Versus CPU, Play a Friend, all the same — sitting in its own slot beside HOLD, marked 1 SHOT. Tap it to load the charge whenever you want. Changed your mind? Tap the slot again before you actually fire and it goes right back, no cost, as many times as you like. It's only once you pull the trigger that it's truly gone for that game; nothing refills it. It is the only special that reaches past the front of the stack. Two Players on one keyboard is the one place you won't see it: a sniper needs a pointer.
Holding a marble
There's one slot beside your cannon — the bench, the labeled cradle marked HOLD — and it always starts empty. Using it swaps the marble in your breech with the one in the slot. That's how you keep a fire marble, an imitator or a dry-ice marble for the moment it's actually worth spending — load something ordinary, shoot with that, and bring the good one back when the board is right for it.
Only one marble fits in there. Any marble can go in, ordinary colors included, so parking a color you don't want is a perfectly good use of the slot.
There's a second slot right next to it, marked 1 SHOT — that's your one guaranteed sniper charge for the game (Score Attack, Versus CPU or Play a Friend), and it's separate from HOLD in every way. Tap it to load the sniper into your breech, and tap it again — any time before you fire — to change your mind and put it right back; it turns LOADED while it's away like that. Actually firing it is the only thing that can't be undone: the slot then shows USED for the rest of that game, and nothing refills it.
The swap costs you no shot, and you can do it as often as you like. Tap the slot on a phone, press S on a keyboard, or the down arrow if you're the right-hand player in a two-player game.
The clock and the series
On the menu you set how long a duel runs — no limit, or one to five minutes — and whether you're playing a single game, best of 3, or best of 5. If nobody's buried when the clock runs out, the higher score wins. It goes red and starts ticking with fifteen seconds left, which is when a lead becomes worth defending and a deficit becomes worth gambling a drop on.
In a series the result card keeps the score and the button becomes Next game until someone has enough wins. Online, the room uses whatever the first player into it picked, so you can't start a match with the two sides disagreeing about the rules.
Score Attack ignores all of that. It has no clock and it ends when the ceiling wins — and it always eventually does.
Watch the badge next to the mode name in the top bar: that's your level.
Playing a friend online
Both of you open the same link and tap Play a Friend.
Type a name, then a room code — any word you both agree on. WARTASTIC, BADMINTON, anything. Whoever types it first makes the room; the second person typing it walks into it.
You'll both see each other in the lobby. Each of you hits Ready.
The match starts the moment you're both ready — same opening board for both of you, so nobody gets the easier puzzle.
When it ends, hit Rematch to go again, or Room to go back to the lobby. The room remembers the win/loss record between you.
Online only works on the real game address — not on a preview copy. If Play a Friend looks greyed out, you're on a preview; open the shared link instead.
Two on one screen
Best on a laptop, or a phone turned sideways. Left player: A / D to aim, W to fire. Right player: ← / → to aim, ↑ to fire.
