HOW TO PLAY

Head-to-head on a shared seed: both players get the identical board, and the higher score wins. Duels are free and unlimited — they do not touch your daily plays, and they pay nothing. The winner takes the bragging rights, the XP, and the rivalry.

Every duel also moves a rating. Beating somebody far above you is worth a great deal and beating somebody far below you is worth almost nothing, so a rating says who you have beaten rather than just how often you have won — and it cannot be farmed by picking on the bottom of the board. Only duels where both players posted a run the server could replay are rated: a run that does not verify still loses the duel, but it is not evidence of anything, so it moves no rating. The standings are on the duels page.

Your record and your rating count different things. The record counts every settled duel; the rating counts only the verified ones. They are not meant to add up.

A crew is a team. Every stage anyone in it clears this season adds to one team score, so a crew climbs the team board by everybody playing rather than by one person carrying it. Join with an invite code, or add the bot to a Telegram group and that group gets a crew of its own — though being in the chat does not put you in the crew. Joining does.

Crew wars. A captain challenges another crew to one cabinet for one day. Each side is scored on its best five verified runs, so a war is not a headcount and a crew of six can take one from a crew of fifty. Wars are ranked by rating rather than by wins, for the same reason duels are: beating a much weaker crew is worth almost nothing.

Spare a play. Out of plays? Put your hand up and a crewmate can spend one of their own on you. It costs them the play — nothing is created — and there is a daily cap on both giving and receiving.

A gifted play is not ranked on the daily board. It is for practice and for crew wars. Your own allowance is what counts on the board, and it is capped per wallet so that the board cannot be topped by collecting other people’s plays.

Crews are status only. No crew, war or gift has ever paid a token.

On a phone: a thumbstick and an action button appear under the cabinet. The stick has no target to miss — touch anywhere in the control band and it appears under your thumb. Prefer the old four-way pad? The audio button in the corner swaps between them, and the cabinet remembers which you chose.

Three cabinets do it their own way. SALVO and FUSION take their input on the screen itself — tap where you want to intercept, swipe to slide the tiles. DRIFT lets you turn and thrust at the same time, which is the only way to fly it. And ZIGGURAT’s pyramid is drawn on the diagonal: with the stick you push toward the cube you want, and with the pad the hops are diagonal, so up goes up-right.

On a desktop: arrow keys or WASD, with space for the action button. Every cabinet prints its own controls under the marquee before you start.