How to play

RICOCUBE is easy to start and hard to master. This guide explains what you see, how the controls work, how each mode is scored and what separates a 30-second run from a three-minute one.

What you are looking at

The playing field is a transparent cube seen slightly from above. Its six faces are the walls, and every wall is open: if the golden ball passes a wall where no paddle stands, it is a miss. In front of every wall floats a flat paddle. In solo you control all of them; in multiplayer each of the three players owns a pair of opposite walls – left and right, top and bottom, or front and back.

Because a screen is flat, the game gives you three depth cues. The tail behind the ball shows where it came from and how fast it is going. The shadow on the floor is a real cast shadow, so it shrinks and sharpens as the ball drops and grows softer as it rises. And the red aim dot marks the exact spot on the next wall where the ball is going to arrive. Most good players watch the dot, not the ball.

Controls

RICOCUBE runs in any modern browser on desktop and mobile. You can play with a mouse, a trackpad, a touch screen or the keyboard. The pointer sensitivity is adjustable in the settings, which helps a lot on large monitors and on small phones alike. Solo offers three control schemes so beginners and veterans both feel at home:

• Strips (easiest). Each side wall gets a guide strip. You only move the paddles across the face of a wall; the game handles the depth for you. Great for your first runs and for the leaderboard everyone compares.
• Auto depth. You steer freely, and the paddles follow the ball's depth automatically. It feels closer to real 3D without overloading your hands.
• Full depth. You control depth yourself with the mouse wheel or a two-finger gesture. The hardest scheme and the most precise – this is where the longest records are set.

Each scheme has its own records, so trying a harder scheme never costs you a personal best on the easier one.

The goal and the speed curve

Every time a paddle returns the ball, it becomes 1 % faster. That sounds small, but it compounds: after about 70 hits the ball is twice as fast as at the start, and after 140 hits it is four times as fast. A run is measured in seconds survived, and the speed curve is what makes each extra second harder than the last.

Modes

Solo

You against the cube. One miss ends the run. Your time is saved per control scheme and per difficulty level, and the best runs appear on the public leaderboard. Solo is the fairest test of skill, which is why items in solo are off by default and runs with items switched on do not count for the leaderboard.

Versus

Three players, three lives each, two walls each. If the ball passes one of your walls you lose a life and the ball is served again from the centre. The last player with lives left wins. Because the ball is shared, the game is also about aiming: steer it towards the wall of whoever is in trouble.

Co-op

All three players defend the cube together with a shared pool of team lives. The team's survival time is the score. Co-op is the best mode for teaching a friend, because everyone wins or loses together.

Online and first-person view

Open a room and share the four-letter code. Up to three people can join from different devices; every player sees the cube from their own first-person view, looking at their walls. Free seats are filled by computer players, so a room with two people still works.

Training

A seven-step tutorial introduces the aim dot, depth and steering one by one. After that, practice mode lets you play without losing the ball, and you can set the starting speed anywhere from 40 % to 250 % to rehearse slow precision or fast reactions.

Difficulty

Four levels change the size of your paddles: Beginner (+50 % paddle size), Easy (+20 %), Medium (+10 %) and Pro. Each level keeps its own records. Computer opponents also play better on higher levels, but they move smoothly and can be beaten – they are tuned to feel like human players, not perfect walls.

Ten tips for longer runs

1. Watch the red dot, not the ball. The dot tells you where to be; the ball only tells you where it is.
2. Return to the centre of a wall after each hit. From the centre every point of the wall is equally close.
3. Use the shadow to judge height when two walls are close together, for example in corners.
4. Move early and small. Late, big movements at high speed are the main cause of misses.
5. Learn the edge: a ball can hit the rim of a paddle. It still counts, but it bounces off at a sharper angle.
6. Stand still when you want a clean reflection; move during the hit when you want to steer.
7. In versus, aim at the wall that is diagonally furthest from the opponent's paddle.
8. In co-op, call out walls. "Mine!" saves more lives than any item.
9. Lower the sensitivity if you overshoot, raise it if you cannot reach the far corners.
10. Practise at 150 % in training – normal speed will feel calm afterwards.

Want to know exactly how the ball reacts to your paddle? Read the physics explained. Curious about power-ups? See all twelve items.