STAIR BALL

The pitch

Climb an endless staircase full of danger in Stairs Ball, a fast and minimal arcade game. You control a small ball running up colorful steps. The path looks simple, but each stair is covered with deadly spikes and tricky gaps. One wrong move and your run is over. Collect shiny rubies on your way to unlock new balls and styles. Chain “perfect” moves to build huge combos and smash your high score. The higher you climb, the faster and harder it gets it’s all about timing, reflexes, and focus.

Controls & how it runs

Touch and hold the screen to move the ball left or right across the stairs. Release and press again to quickly switch direction. Your goal is to keep climbing without hitting any spikes. Each stair can have black cone spikes. If the ball touches a spike, the run ends instantly. Read the pattern of spikes and move early, not at the last second.

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 portrait (upright) screen and listens to mouse, keyboard or touch, whichever the game prefers. This cabinet stands tall: it was built for portrait screens, so a phone held upright gives it the frame it wants — though it will squeeze politely into any window. 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.

STAIR BALL — quick-fire questions

Does STAIR BALL 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 STAIR BALL?

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 STAIR BALL on my phone?

Happily, yes. It runs inside the browser on phones and tablets the same way it does on a computer. This cabinet stands tall: it was built for portrait screens, so a phone held upright gives it the frame it wants — though it will squeeze politely into any window.

Do I need to install anything first?

Nothing whatsoever. STAIR BALL 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.