Split Pop

Split Pop is a free bubble popping harpoon game you play right in your browser. A little hero in a yellow raincoat walks along the floor of a room and fires a rope straight up from a pop-gun. Every big bouncing ball the rope touches splits into two smaller balls, and the smallest ones pop for good. It is the classic ball splitting arcade formula from the coin-op days, rebuilt for today with crisp flat art, one-finger controls on a phone and the arrow keys on a computer, which puts it right next to our other arcade games and retro games.

Each room starts with a few balls hanging in the air, then they drop and bounce. Big balls bounce high and slowly, and every split makes them smaller, faster and lower, so a room gets more crowded and more dangerous the more you pop, right up to the last tiny ball. Only one rope can be on screen at a time, so a wasted shot leaves you waiting while a ball comes down on you. One touch from any ball costs a life. Later rooms bring several big balls at once, ledges that the balls bounce on, glass shelves your rope can smash, and pillars hanging from the ceiling that block your shots and bend the bounces.

Now and then a popped ball drops a pickup on the floor. Walk over it to take it: the double rope fires two ropes side by side with every shot, the sticky rope stays hooked to the ceiling for four seconds and pops anything that touches it, the shield saves you from one hit, and the freeze stops every ball in the air for four seconds. Grab them before they blink out.

Every room has its own clock. Clear it fast and every second left becomes a time bonus; let the clock run out and it costs a life instead of ending the game. Your score adds up the pops (the smaller the ball, the more it is worth), a bonus for every room you clear, and the time bonus. In Endless there is no overall time limit: you keep going room after room on three lives, and the rooms keep getting harder until the balls get you. A 90-second version plays in The Daily. Your best run goes on the weekly and all-time leaderboards, and every top run is replayed and checked on our servers first, so it fits right in with our shooting games and reaction games.

The controls are built for both screens. On a phone, tap where you want to shoot: the hero runs to that spot and fires the moment it gets there, and a tap right on the hero fires at once. Hold your finger down instead and the hero follows it without shooting, perfect for dodging. The strip under the floor is the best place for your thumb, because it never covers a ball. On a computer, walk with the arrow keys or A and D and shoot with Space or the up arrow, or click where you want to shoot. Press P to pause, and Endless pauses itself if you step away. It plays just as well on mobile as on PC, is one of our easiest keyboard games, and sits with the rest of our free online games with no download.