How to Play

You get one push, and then you are only watching

Shuffle Smash is a free party game that runs in the browser — nothing to install. A laptop or TV shows a long sheet of ice with a cliff where the far wall ought to be. Everyone joins with their phone, and each phone becomes an arm.

Here is the whole of it: you aim, you wind up, you let go — and then you cannot touch it. No steering, no braking, no second thoughts. The puck slides for about four seconds and the room watches it do whatever you already decided.

Every other game on this site lets you keep correcting. This one takes your hands off the moment you commit, which is a different kind of nerve entirely.

Ready in 30 seconds

1. Open the game on the biggest screen you have — a TV's browser, a laptop, or a projector: that is the host screen.
2. Everyone else points their phone camera at the QR code on the screen — it opens the controller with the arena code already filled in.
3. Type a name, tap JOIN. iPhones will ask for motion access — allow it, that is the tilt sensor.
4. The host picks CO-OP or VERSUS. Six phones fit on one sheet of ice.

Hold the phone flat, like a tray. Lean it back towards you to load the throw and the meter fills; level it off to let go. Small tilts left and right aim, and the bar under the meter is the line the puck will leave on.

The meter holds the furthest back you got, not where the phone is right now. It has to — the throw fires as you come back to level, and at that moment you are barely leaning at all. What counts is how far you drew it.

The controller turns sideways when a round starts and stays that way between rounds, so the direction you are aiming never moves under you. If your phone will not turn, the 📱 AUTO button in the corner lets you say which way round you are holding it.

Play it with your hands instead

If nobody has a phone to spare, a webcam will do. On the host screen, switch PHONES to HANDS at the top, and allow the camera when the browser asks. There is no QR code and nothing to join — the screen with the camera on it is the whole setup.

1. Make a fist. That is you holding the puck. A small preview appears in the corner with a ring on the hand it is following.
2. Pull your fist back — down and towards you. The bar under the preview fills as you go, and the same bar runs across the bottom of the arena.
3. Move your fist left or right to aim. The cross in the preview is straight ahead; the line from it to your hand is the shot.
4. Open your hand to throw. Whatever the bar was showing is what goes.

Take as long as you like between the pull and the release. The wind-up is held, not timed, so you can pull back, line the shot up properly and open your hand a few seconds later — the throw is the one you set up, not the one you happened to be making at that instant. Raise your hand above where you started and the wind-up resets, which is how you take a shot back without unclenching.

The aim is read from just before your hand starts opening, because a hand rolls forward as it opens and would drag the shot with it. Full pull is the best throw on the ice; the last sliver of the bar goes amber, and that is the one that sails over the edge.

Co-op by camera is one player. One camera follows one hand — put your other hand down or it will simply be ignored, marked with a faint dot in the preview. VERSUS is two, one each side of the picture. Hand games keep their own leaderboard, so they are never ranked against a room of phones.

Two ways to be unable to take it back

VERSUS In turns, and the six is on the very lip

Bands score one to six up the ice, and the six is a strip on the edge itself — a puck's width from a drop with nothing under it. Everyone throws once a round, five rounds, and the ice keeps every puck that lands. By the third round you are not throwing at an empty sheet, you are throwing at everybody else's.

You do not have to go long to score well. Every round marks four bonus circles on the near ice — dashed rings painted into the sheet — each worth double the band it sits on, so an 8 can be sitting in the 4-band, closer and safer than a six. They are laid once a round and then left alone, so the whole room can plan around the same board. And the two corners on the lip pay ten: the hardest spots on the ice, because too long goes over and too wide rebounds off a rail.

THE ICE Four boards, and the room picks one

Before a game starts the big screen asks how's the ice? — one choice for everybody, because the board is shared. Plain is the game as described above. The other three each give you something to read before you commit; none of them touches the throw itself, because the whole point of this game is that once it leaves your hand you can only watch.

• Bumps. Three domes drifting slowly across the near ice. Cross one dead centre and you go straight over it; clip its edge and it throws you off line. Because they move, when you throw matters as much as how hard.
• Patches. Pale ice is slick and carries a throw long; dark ice is sticky and kills one early. Nothing is deflected — only how far you get — so the six stops being a number you dial and becomes a route you pick.
• Crosswind. A push across the sheet, shown by streaks blowing over the ice. It is redrawn before every throw — hard left for one, gentle right for the next — so read it each time. Aim into it and you run straight; ignore it and the wind picks your band. A full steer can always beat it.

A game played on modified ice still counts, and the leaderboard says which ice it was.

Then the board changes. On the last throw in co-op, and through the whole last round in versus, a small gold circle worth twenty-five appears in the five-band. It is about the size of a puck, so you have to stop dead on it, and it never lands under a puck already resting there. It stays once it is down — so if your puck is smashed off it, the twenty-five goes to whoever takes your place. However far behind you are, the last throw can still win it.

The leader throws first and whoever is behind throws last. That is deliberate, and it is the shape of the whole game: the last throw of a round sees the whole sheet and can shove the leader's four straight over the edge. Being ahead is uncomfortable, and nobody is ever out of it.

Knocking a rival off stops your puck dead where theirs was, so you take their points away and take their place. On the wide bands near the lip you will often end up scoring what they were scoring — the cost is not the band, it is the throw: you spent your one shot of the round denying them instead of building your own total. That trade is the decision.

A full-power throw always goes over. Always. The four belongs to whoever had the nerve to hold something back.

CO-OP One puck, and the room winds it up together

The same board as versus — the same bands, the same cliff. There is one puck and it is driven by the average of everyone's wind-up — the gold mark on your meter is where the room as a whole is pulling, and if it is nowhere near your own fill, that is why the throw is not going where you want.

Five throws between you, and the score is whatever the ice still holds at the end. That last part matters: your own pucks can smash each other, so a hard throw through a settled four is the room taking its own points away.

Nobody presses anything. The throw goes when the room lets go together — a quick drop back to level. Sag back slowly and nothing fires, which is also how you change your mind: lower the phones gently and wind up again.

What your phone is telling you

• The meter fills as you lean back, and it holds the furthest you got. That held mark is the throw you are about to make.
• The line near the top is full power. Past it you are buying nothing — and in versus, full power is always too much.
• The gold mark is the room's average. Co-op only. Pull towards it.
• The bar underneath is your aim, read at the instant you let go rather than averaged. The puck leaves on the line the phone was pointing.
• The line at the bottom says whose throw it is. When it is yours it goes cherry, and the number above it is your shot clock.
• Eight seconds. Run out and the throw goes anyway, with whatever you were holding at that moment. Stalling is not an option the game offers.
• The meter is not a map. It shows the throw, not the ice. Watch the big screen for that.

Advice from the wall

• Full power is a puck in the void. If you want the six, draw it back nearly all the way and stop — the window is real, but it is narrow and it sits below the top.
• Read the circles before you throw. A short throw onto an 8 beats a brave one onto a 6, and it cannot go over the edge.
• Level off cleanly. A wobbly release is a wobbly aim, because the aim is read at that exact instant.
• Being in the lead means throwing into an empty sheet with everyone watching where you put it. Sometimes the sensible four is a safe two.
• A puck knocked off scores nothing, and it does not matter whose it was — including yours, if somebody clips it on the way past.
• In co-op, say out loud how far back you are all pulling before anyone leans. The average of six different guesses is a guess nobody made.
• In co-op a settled puck is money in the bank — and the next throw can spend it. Aim past your own pucks, not through them.
• Watch the whole slide. You cannot do anything about it, and that is the point — the room finding out together is the game.

Friends elsewhere can play too

The host's 📨 INVITE FRIENDS button copies one link, and the link works out what to do with itself. Opened on a computer it mirrors the ice live, about a tenth of a second behind. Opened on a phone it explains the missing half: a phone cannot be the arena, so it offers to pass the link to a TV or laptop and then scan the QR that screen puts up.

Small print, big font

My phone doesn't throw anything.

iPhones need the motion permission — it's asked when you tap JOIN. If you declined it, close the tab, reopen, and allow. Both phones and the game need HTTPS, which this site always uses.

Do I hold the phone sideways?

Flat, like a tray. The controller turns itself sideways once a round starts, so the direction you are aiming stays put while the ice is live.

Nothing happened when I let go.

Two gates. The pull has to pass a quarter of the meter before it counts as a wind-up at all, and the release has to be a FLICK — snap back to level like a real toss. Drift back slowly and the throw is cancelled on purpose: that is how you change your mind.

How many can play?

Six phones per arena. Co-op puts all six on one puck and averages the wind-up; versus gives each of them one throw a round. Watchers: 5 per arena.

Everything I throw goes over the edge.

Everyone does at first, and it is not you. Full power is designed to go over: the ice is exactly as long as a maximum throw, plus a little. Draw it back nearly all the way and stop, and the six is there.

Somebody knocked my four off. Is that allowed?

It is the point. Your puck sits on the ice for the rest of the round as a target that cannot move, and whoever is behind throws last precisely so they get a shot at it.

Does it cost anything?

No. It's a free browser game. If it made your evening better, there's a ❤️ button on the host screen.