How to Play

One giant maze, everyone's phone

Tipsy Table is a free party game that runs entirely in the browser — nothing to install. A laptop or TV shows a top-down toy maze with a googly-eyed marble in it. Everyone joins with their phone, and each phone becomes an invisible tilt controller.

Here's the joke: in co-op mode the maze doesn't listen to any single player — the whole board tilts by the average of everyone's tilt. If you lean left and your friend leans right, the marble sits still and judges you. If you all lean together, it flies.

The campaign is 12 hand-built levels, easy to evil. Roll from the start to the gold star, dodge the holes, and do it fast — the clock never stops.

Ready in 30 seconds

1. Open the game on the biggest screen you have — a TV's browser, a laptop, or a projector: that's 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. (Or type the address and enter the 4-letter code by hand.)
3. Type a name, tap JOIN. iPhones will ask for motion access — allow it, that's the tilt sensor.
4. The host picks CO-OP or VERSUS. Countdown. Roll.

Hold the phone flat, like a tray with a drink on it — flat is "level", and any tilt away from flat steers the marble. Small tilts, not big ones: the marble remembers momentum, and heroes end up in holes.

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. Hold a fist. The table leans wherever your hand goes — left, right, forward and back — and the marble rolls the way it always would.
2. Open your hand to spend your card, which in a season is the grow curse you hand to somebody else.
3. Straight ahead is re-taken at the start of a level, so a hand that has drifted while you were concentrating does not carry a lean into the next maze.

A small preview appears in the corner. It puts a ring on the hand it is following and a cross where straight ahead is, so you can see both that the camera has you and which way it thinks you are leaning.

The table is only as steady as your arm, and a maze is long. Rest your elbow on something if you can — it is the difference between a marble that creeps and one that wanders.

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.

It is called Tipsy for a reason

The first few mazes sit still. After that the table starts leaning on its own — a real lean, added to whatever the room is tilting, so the marble genuinely rolls with it.

It always tells you first. The table creaks and starts rocking two seconds before it goes, and it rocks toward the side it is about to fall — so the warning is not just an alarm, it is a direction. Those two seconds are the whole game: back off that edge, park with a wall behind you, or steer into the lean and let it carry you. What you must not do is be hanging over a hole when it lands.

While it tips, everything doubles — the board swims, because you are the one who has had a few. It clears as the table settles.

It gets worse as the campaign goes on — more often, and further over. Everyone on the table gets the same lean at the same moment, so it can never pick on one player.

If it makes you queasy

The host is asked every time a game starts, on the big screen. FULL is the table tipping and the room swimming with it. CALM keeps the tipping exactly as it is but holds the screen still — same mazes, same difficulty, same leaderboard, just nothing lurching at you; the warning arrives as a spreading amber glow on the side it is about to fall instead of a sway. OFF means the table never tips at all.

OFF is an easier game — nothing is going to shove you into a hole — so those runs carry a 🚫 on the leaderboard. CALM runs carry nothing, because CALM changes only what the screen does.

Two ways to roll

CO-OP One marble, shared blame

The whole room steers a single marble by tilting one shared maze together. The bubble level at the bottom of the host screen shows the group's combined tilt — and exactly who is dragging it toward that hole. Finish every level; the team's total time goes on the leaderboard. One phone works too: alone, your tilt is the whole average and there's no one to blame — the classic solo speedrun.

VERSUS Marble derby

Up to 8 players, each with their own coloured marble on the same board. The board itself stays flat — your tilt pushes your marble only. Marbles bounce off each other hard, and shoulder-checking a rival into a hole is legal, encouraged, and costs them a life: everyone gets 5 lives per level, every fall burns one, and the fifth fall is a knockout — the marble faints where it stands and sits out the rest of the level.

And everyone finishes. The race doesn't end when the first marble hits the star — the winner parks on it with a medal while a DNF clock starts ticking for everyone still rolling. Get home before it runs out and your placement pays points; the points stack across all 12 levels into a season. Full arithmetic under SCORING.

The season also deals a dirty trick: the 🍄 GROW card. Everyone gets one charge at level 1, with a fresh one at levels 5 and 9 — they don't stack, so a hoarded charge is a wasted one. Play it mid-race and a random rival balloons to half again their size for 10 seconds: heavier, wider, easier to shoulder-check and terrible at squeezing past holes. Falling in doesn't cure it — the curse rides the respawn. The mark gets a 2.5-second warning first — a cherry reticle on the big screen, a buzz in their hand — and while the reticle is on them they can spend their own charge on 🛡 SHIELD: a mint dome pops up and the curse fizzles on it. A deflect burns both charges, and each rival can only be cursed once per charge window — spread the misery.

Know the floor

• Walls are solid, chunky and honest. Bounce off them all you like — they cost time, not lives.
• Holes are round, dark and hungry. Roll over one and the marble spirals in with a sad little slide-whistle, then respawns at your last checkpoint. The clock keeps running the whole time.
• Moving holes are the ones with googly eyes — they wander back and forth on a steady rhythm. Watch their beat and slip past when they've wandered away.
• Checkpoint flags start grey and turn mint when you roll past. Tag them — they're where you come back after a hole. In versus, each marble tags its own flags.
• The gold star is the finish. Touch it and the level's done.
• The marble has eyes. The eyes watch the nearest hole. The marble knows.

The clock is the boss

In co-op — one phone or sixteen — one timer counts up across the entire campaign — falls, respawns, arguments and all. Your final score is the total time, and lower is better. If two runs tie, the one with fewer falls wins.

Falls don't add a penalty on top — the punishment is the detour: you replay everything since your last checkpoint while the clock grins and keeps counting.

Versus runs a season instead. Every level is a full race: with 6 marbles rolling, 1st home pays 6 points, 2nd pays 5, and so on down to 1 for the last one in. Miss the DNF clock — or faint on your fifth fall (rammed-in falls count, that's the weapon) — and the level pays zero. Lives and grudges reset to 5 every level; the points carry.

After the last level comes the podium, by total points. Ties go to fewer total falls, then to faster total time. Versus never touches the leaderboard — the season podium and the confetti are the whole prize.

Advice from fallen marbles

• Tiny corrections beat heroic swings. The marble keeps its momentum — level out before the hole, not over it.
• In co-op, appoint one caller for the scary parts. "Left… left… STOP" works; four captains average out to zero.
• Tag every checkpoint even when it costs a second. It's insurance, and the late levels collect premiums.
• Holding the phone sideways? Tap the 📱 button on your controller and pick LANDSCAPE — the game remaps your tilt.
• In versus, patience wins: let the eager marbles fight by the hole, then roll past the wreckage.

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 maze live, about a tenth of a second behind. Opened on a phone it explains the missing half: a phone can't be the arena, so it offers to pass the link to a TV or laptop and then scan the QR that screen puts up. Phone in one hand, maze on the big screen — remote rolling works surprisingly well.

Small print, big font

My phone doesn't tilt 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.

My phone screen rotated and the controls flipped.

Android phones lock their screen when you join. iPhones can't be locked by a web page — use the 📱 orientation button, or turn on iOS rotation lock.

How many can play?

Six phones per arena, in either mode: co-op puts all six on one maze — one brave phone works fine, and past four it becomes a negotiation — while versus gives each its own marble.

I fell in a hole and came back somewhere else.

That was your last mint-flagged checkpoint — or the start, if you skipped them all. See "Tag every checkpoint", above. In versus the same trip also burned one of your 5 lives for the level.

My marble fainted with ✕ eyes and won't come back.

Fifth fall of the level — in versus that's a knockout: no respawn, zero points for the level, and it counts whether you rolled in or got shoved. You're back with five fresh lives at the next countdown.

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.