Game play types

Needs edting

Classic challenges: In the game’s classic levels, each tap of the thumb propels your icon upward.

Reverse: Start at the top of the course and work your way down—with gravity fighting you the whole way.

Race: In these levels, you’re racing against the ghosts of other players, like in the time trial mode of Mario Kart.

Color Switch

Cave: Your visibility is reduced to a small orb of light surrounding your player token, so you can’t plan too many moves in advance.

Zig-zag cants your travel 45 degrees to the right or left.

Control: Tapping alters the state of the course’s obstacles instead of the ball’s motion.

Turn: Tap left or right to rotate the puzzle piece in the middle of the screen in either direction as various colored balls fly at it from all sides.

Shoot: Take aim to fire your balls at others that match. Break operates similarly.

Line: Your token follows a dashed line that weaves in and around the screen. It’s harder to see the upcoming obstacles, and a flying ninja star is chasing you up the course.

Spin: Propel your icon through the level by waiting for its path to line up with a safe spot ahead, then tap to send it flying to the sticky rings. It’ll stay in the spot where it landed, rotating along with the piece it’s stuck to, until you tap again to send it flying in the direction it’s facing.

Black/White: This converts all the app’s traditional colors to black and white, which seems like it should simplify matters. Instead, there’s a certain cognitive dissonance at play: After a dozen challenges that rely on you sending your icon through a matching color, the Black/White mode wants players to send a black ball through a white space and vice versa. Hitting obstacles of the same shade will end your turn immediately.

Color Switch

Bounce: This mode turns the classic game mechanics on their head, almost literally: Instead of traveling up and down, you spend your time bouncing back and forth between the walls on the left and right sides of the screen. Try to hit only the panels that match your icon’s color until one side finally becomes the finish line. In this mode, you have to dodge the top and bottom of your screen.

Split: Here, your icon travels up at a steady rate, but each time you tap, you can split it into two pieces in order to dodge an obstacle in your path. Press repeatedly to dodge a long line of obstacles; pressing and holding won’t work here. But be sure not to stay split so long that you miss the free stars along the way, and don’t split so far you accidentally hit the edges with either half.