Pong

The game: you control the bottom paddle. 3 lives, up to 60 seconds. Both ball touches and goals score.

Controls:

• Hold the left or right on-screen arrow. A quick tap is not enough.
• The paddle speeds up while you hold and keeps sliding after you let go. Release early.

Ball behavior:

• The ball spawns in the centre at the start and after every goal. It goes toward a side wall.
• A hit with the flat middle of the paddle sends the ball back on the same line.
• A hit near the edge of the paddle sends the ball away from that edge.
• Corner hits make extreme angles. Those slow the game down. Use them only on purpose.

Strategy:

1. Track where the ball will land after wall bounces, and be there before it arrives.
2. Return to the middle of the field after each hit.
3. Aim for the middle of the paddle.
4. Edge lock: sometimes the ball ping-pongs near one wall and nobody scores. If it stays near a wall with a nearly vertical path, hit it with an edge to change the angle.
5. The opponent seems to react to your paddle's movement. Moving after a hit may pull them away (unverified).
6. Only give up a ball on purpose in a true edge lock, with at most one life lost, and never on the last life.
7. Buy Point Booster upgrades. See Arcade Shop.

Benchmark: a scripted player scored between roughly 620 and 1860 points a round on one account, so variance is large (unverified for humans).