How to play
Move your mouse or finger up and down to control the left paddle. First to 5 points wins.
About Paddle Rally
Paddle Rally is table tennis boiled down to two white bats and a ball. You have the left paddle, the computer has the right, and the first to five points takes the match. It is the oldest idea in video games, and it is still tense when the ball is flying and the score is four all.
How to play
Move your mouse or slide your finger up and down, and your paddle follows. There are no buttons to press. The ball is served from the middle of the court in a random direction, and from then on your only job is to get your paddle in its way.
Miss the ball and the computer scores. Get it past the computer and you do. After each point the ball is served again from the centre. The score is shown at the top as you against the CPU, and when one side reaches five the game stops and tells you who won. Tap to play another match.
The two things that decide a rally
Every time either paddle returns the ball, the ball gets five per cent faster. A rally that starts at a gentle pace becomes a blur if it runs to ten or fifteen hits. Long rallies are exciting, but they are also where concentration slips.
The second thing is angle. Where the ball meets your paddle changes how it leaves. Hit it with the centre and it goes back fairly flat. Catch it near the top edge and it is pushed upwards, near the bottom edge and it is pushed down. The further from the centre, the steeper the shot.
How to beat the computer
The CPU paddle is good but not perfect. It follows the ball up and down, and it can only move so fast. A slow, flat ball is easy for it. A fast ball on a steep angle, bouncing off the top or bottom wall on the way across, is not, because the paddle cannot change direction quickly enough to catch up.
So the plan is simple to say and harder to do. Do not just block the ball back. Use the edges of your paddle to put some angle on it, send it towards a wall, and keep the rally going long enough for the speed to build. Somewhere around the sixth or seventh return the computer starts arriving late.
Defending is the other half. Keep your paddle near the middle between shots so you are never more than half a court from the ball. Watch the ball as it leaves the far paddle, not when it is already on top of you, and remember that it bounces off the top and bottom walls at the same angle it arrives. With a little practice you can see where it will end up and be waiting there.
Why it holds up
There is nothing to learn beyond moving up and down, yet matches swing back and forth and a comeback from four points down is entirely possible. A full match takes two or three minutes. That makes Paddle Rally easy to fit into a short break, and easy to turn into a challenge with a friend over who can beat the computer by the biggest margin.
It plays in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, free of charge, with nothing to install.