Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer

The pitch

Casual game about catching items rolling in from four directions. Help Santa save the toys from falling! Toys are rolling in from four directions, move the basket quickly to catch each one before it falls. Miss three toys, and the game is over. The more toys you catch, the more points you earn.

Controls & how it runs

Controls are simple: Choose the position where to move the basket and press the corresponding key — Q, A, E, D (or Q, A, P, L) on a computer, or tap the arrow buttons on your phone or tablet. Catch the toys before they fall. The more toys you catch, the more points you earn.

Getting a run going takes exactly one press: Press start, up top, and the game boots inside this page — nothing downloads in the background and no form wants your details before the first jump. The cabinet is drawn for a landscape (wide) screen and listens to mouse, keyboard or touch, whichever the game prefers. This cabinet runs wide: landscape screens flatter it, so tip a phone on its side or hand it a tablet or desktop and let it stretch out. Given a fullscreen button, use it — scores look better at full size, that's just science.

Pro tips for arcade cabinets

• Treat your first run as a scouting mission. Arcade cabinets hide their cruelty in the second minute, not the first — learn where the difficulty spikes before you start chasing numbers.
• Small scores compound. Grab the easy pickups on every pass instead of gambling the whole run on one heroic line; heroes respawn, banked points don't evaporate.
• Watch the edges of the screen. In classic arcade design the next problem almost always enters from somewhere you weren't looking — build the habit of scanning the borders.

Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer — quick-fire questions

Does Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer cost anything to play?

Not a token. The cabinet is free from the first run to the five-hundredth — no wallet, no sign-up, no toll booth hiding three levels in. The adverts around the page are what keep the floor's lights on.

What sort of game is Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer?

It stands on our Arcade row — that's the family it plays most like. The pitch above is the publisher's own rundown of what it throws at you and what it hands back.

Can I play Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer on my phone?

Happily, yes. It runs inside the browser on phones and tablets the same way it does on a computer. This cabinet runs wide: landscape screens flatter it, so tip a phone on its side or hand it a tablet or desktop and let it stretch out.

Do I need to install anything first?

Nothing whatsoever. Catch It! Santa the Toy Rescuer is an HTML5 game: hit the start button and it boots on this page, and shutting the tab sweeps the cabinet clean behind you.

Before you wander off

Personal best banked, or still chasing it? Either way the full Arcade row is powered on and waiting — The main floor: 415 cabinets of pure arcade stock — the quick, the loud and the gloriously unfair. If it beeps, flashes and dares you to beat a number, it lives on this row.