Domino Day

Domino Day is a free domino chain reaction game set on the pages of a tear-off day calendar. Every room is already full of things that fall: rows of black dominoes on shelves and counters, books, cereal boxes and toy soldiers, and a red desk bell waiting at the end. The rows have gaps, and you get only a few dominoes to close them. Drag yours into place, press GO and watch the chain run under real physics: dominoes clack, books thud, the last domino of a shelf drops to the floor below, and if your chain makes it all the way, the bell rings. It is a small rube goldberg game you build in seconds, one of our favourite physics games and quick games.

A day has five rooms, and it gets harder as it goes. Breakfast at 8:00 is the warm-up: kitchen shelves and cupboards, a drop or two, two plain gaps and a domino to spare. The Study at 11:00 adds heavy books and, most days, a desk where the bell stands. In the Workshop at 14:00 you get exactly two dominoes, one for each gap, with nothing to spare. The Playroom at 17:00 runs down three levels and has one wide gap that a single domino bridges only if you set it right in the middle, or safely with two. Bedtime at 20:00 is the day's last test: a room like the playroom with only two dominoes, so the wide gap's one has to stand just so. The clock is short too, 15 to 17 seconds a room. The rooms are new every day: each comes from a set of about 150 rooms, dealt in turn, so a room comes back to its hour only after about five months, and then the other way round. Every room is a little chain reaction puzzle: where does each red domino have to stand so the wave keeps going, and how few can you get away with? While you drag, a dotted arc shows how far the domino reaches when it falls, so you can see whether it will hit the next one.

Only what you topple counts. A room scores once the chain runs through at least one of your red dominoes: the starter knocks over the first row by itself, so a room you leave empty, or whose chain never reaches one of your dominoes, scores nothing. Once it does, you get 10 points for every domino, book and toy that falls, 100 for ringing the bell, 150 more when the whole room goes down, and 25 for every red domino you did not need once the bell has rung. Anything that falls before the starter is flicked does not count, so a domino turned on its corner to cheat a gap only costs you. A perfect day is 1,870 points. Top scores are re-simulated on our servers move for move, which puts Domino Day among our competitive games.

Then comes the part worth sharing. Everyone gets the same five rooms each day, so after each room you see how you compare with today's builders, and the end card is the day's page: how many things you toppled in giant red numerals, a line for each room with its bell, and a note like "You toppled more than 64% of today's builders". The share button sends a line like "Domino Day · 48 of 52 down · rang every bell · beat 64%".

It plays the same on a phone and on a computer. On mobile games you drag the dominoes with a finger and tap the big red GO button; on PC games you drag with the mouse, and Space starts the chain, Q and E turn the selected domino and Backspace puts it back in the tray. A whole day takes about a minute and a half, and the physics is exact and identical on every device, which also makes it one of our casual games for adults and a good pick among free games to play at work.