Rocket Pinball

What is Rocket Pinball?

Rocket Pinball is a free pinball game that runs in your browser, built like a modern digital table: a steel ball with real physics, two flippers, pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets, a spinner, two ramps and a kickout saucer, all drawn with real-time lighting, reflections and shadows. Every level of the table is a planet. Start at Mercury, finish three missions, shoot the Warp ramp and fly on to Venus, Earth, Mars and the giants beyond, all the way out to Pluto.

Each planet repaints the table in its own colours, brings its own music and changes the physics a little: the bumpers kick harder near the Sun, the air is thick on Venus, dust storms blow across Mars, the Great Red Spot swirls the ball on Jupiter, gravity sways on tilted Uranus, wind howls across Neptune and the ball floats in Pluto's low gravity. Lock three balls for multiball, chain ramp shots into combos, climb the Warp levels to Hyperdrive and see how far across the solar system you can get on three balls.

How to play Rocket Pinball

1. Pull back the plunger and let go to launch: hold Space (or hold the right half of the screen) and release. The longer you hold, the harder the launch. Land the ball in the flashing top lane for a skill shot; the flippers move the flashing lane before you launch.
2. Work the flippers with Z or Left Shift and slash (/) or Right Shift, or the arrow keys. On a phone or tablet, tap the left or right half of the screen. A gamepad works too: the shoulder buttons are the flippers and A is the plunger.
3. Read the mission at the top of the screen. Each planet has three missions, such as hitting the pop bumpers, shooting a ramp or spinning the spinner. A progress bar shows how close you are.
4. When all three missions are done the Warp ramp flashes. Shoot it (the right-hand ramp, from the left flipper) to fly to the next planet and collect the planet jackpot.
5. Knock down the three drop targets in front of the Dock to light the lock, then shoot the ball into the Dock. Lock three balls to start multiball, then shoot the ramps for jackpots and the Dock for the super jackpot.
6. Nudge the table with X, period (.) and the up arrow, or swipe up quickly on a touch screen, to save a ball heading for an outlane. Nudge too hard and the table tilts: the flippers go dead until the next ball.

Rocket Pinball tips and strategy

• Catch the ball before you shoot. Hold a flipper up as the ball rolls down to it and the ball stops in the crook of the flipper; let go, then flip again as it rolls for an aimed shot.
• Cross the table. The left flipper makes the Warp ramp on the right, the right flipper makes the Comet ramp on the left, and each ramp drops the ball into the inlane of the opposite flipper, ready for the next shot. Alternate them for combos.
• The first seconds of every ball are protected by ball save, so use them to go for risky shots.
• Relight the kickback in the left outlane by hitting the three orange targets on the left; it saves one ball from the left outlane.
• Shoot the Warp ramp several times in a row: every shot within 12 seconds raises the Warp level, and level 5 is Hyperdrive, which lights an extra ball at the Dock.
• On Jupiter the Great Red Spot pulls the ball sideways in the middle of the table; on Uranus gravity slowly sways from side to side. Watch where the ball drifts and flip a little earlier or later.

Nine planets, 27 missions

The table is the same steel playfield on every planet, but the planet you are on decides the colours, the lighting, the music, the missions and a physics twist. Mercury is the warm-up, with missions to shoot the ramps, hit the pop bumpers and knock out the standup targets. Further out the missions ask for more: orbits and spinner spins on Saturn, timed slingshot frenzies on Uranus, eight major shots in a minute on Neptune and combo chains on Pluto.

Finish a planet's three missions and the Warp ramp lights. Shooting it collects a planet jackpot that grows with every planet and flies you onward. Complete all nine and you have made the grand tour: a five million point bonus, and the tour starts again from Mercury at double value.

Multiball, jackpots and combos

Clearing the three drop targets in front of the Dock lights the lock. Shoot the ball into the Dock to lock it (it is kicked straight back into play), clear the targets again and lock another. The third lock starts three-ball multiball with ball save on. Both ramps then score a jackpot that grows each time you collect one, and after two jackpots the Dock lights the super jackpot.

Major shots (the Comet ramp, the Warp ramp, the orbits and the Dock) made within a few seconds of each other count as a combo, and the combo value climbs with every shot in the chain. The ramps feed the opposite flipper, so a player who can alternate them can keep a chain going for a long time.

Real pinball physics

The ball is simulated 480 times a second, and inside every step it never moves more than a fraction of its own width before collisions are checked again, so even the hardest shot can't pass through a wall, a post or a flipper. Flippers are tapered rubber-edged paddles that swing in a few hundredths of a second; where the ball meets the flipper decides how hard and in which direction it leaves, just as on a real machine. Ramps are separate levels above the playfield: a weak shot runs out of speed and rolls back down.

Pop bumpers and slingshots kick the ball away, drop targets fall when hit, the spinner spins in proportion to the ball's speed, and the Dock catches the ball and kicks it back out into the bumpers. A ball that ever stops somewhere it shouldn't is nudged loose automatically, and if that fails it is lifted out through the Dock.

Built for phones and big screens

The table is drawn with WebGL 2 at your screen's full resolution, with shadows, reflections on the chrome ball, glowing inserts, bloom and particle effects. The graphics adjust themselves to keep the game smooth: on slower phones the game lowers its resolution and effects automatically, and you can choose a quality level in Settings.

In portrait the table fills the screen top to bottom, and in landscape or on a desktop the score and mission panels move to the sides. Full screen gives the table the whole display. Music, effects and the announcer each have their own volume, and your settings and best score are saved in your browser.

Rocket Pinball FAQ