Your paddle at the bottom, the house at the top, a ball between them and two big digits a side. Rally to eleven. The house gets sharper or softer with the mood you keep together.
Mood, both ways
The game keeps two numbers with you, the same model as Breakwater. Returns raise its energy. A lost point lowers its calm. Time brings both back toward the dial you set. Four words name where it is, and the house paddle reads them.
- DAWN warming up. Cool colors, a slow major pulse, an easy house.
- FLOW a long rally. Bright colors, the music opens up, a steadier house.
- RUSH hot colors, raster bars in the border, a faster pulse, a sharp house, and once a game a second ball.
- DRIFT after lost points. Your paddle widens, the ball slows, the notes thin out, the house arrives late.
Your side is the dial: CALM (no game ends, the digits roll on); PLAY (rally to 11); RUSH (starts hot, leans into the second ball). The game relaxes toward it. The mood tape from your session stays in this browser, and after a game the mood is handed to the town.
Two machines
ATARI 800XL (1983, POKEY). The Graphics 0 blue with a black border and light-blue text. Raw square waves with a noise bite, in the POKEY spirit. A blue READY and a RUN before the net.
COMMODORE 64 (1982, SID). The blue field inside a light-blue border. A resonant filter sweep on every voice, in the SID spirit. 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE, then LOAD, then RUN.
The paddle pok is the signature sound. Pong took its three tones from the cabinet's sync generator; Tideline approximates them with square waves, a short mid tone for the paddle, a lower blip for the wall, a longer tone for a point. No samples, no ROMs. Read the research note on Pong and Video Olympics.
The rules
Rally to 11. Serve alternates every point; on your serve the ball waits on your paddle, on the house's serve it comes down after a beat. Eight segments across each paddle decide the angle, steep from the middle and flat from the edges, the 1972 cabinet's rule. Speed rises with every volley and resets on a point. No game ends on CALM; the digits roll on.
Controls
- Move the mouse or drag anywhere on the field. Tap or click to serve.
- Keys: ← → or A D steer, Space serves, P pauses, F full screen, M sound, C scanlines, 1 and 2 switch machines, 3 turns the dial, 4 toggles 2UP; in 2UP the top player steers with J and L and serves with I.
- 2UP hands the top paddle to a second person: touch or mouse in the top half of the field steers it, and the house brain steps aside.
- FULL uses the Fullscreen API. iOS Safari has none for pages, so the stage fills the screen instead; add to Home Screen for the whole display.