Pinball tips for beginners

Stop flipping at everything

The most common beginner habit is hitting both flippers every time the ball comes near. It feels safe, but it sends the ball off in a random direction at full speed, and a fast random ball is the one that ends up in an outlane a second later.

Flip one flipper at a time, and only when you mean to. If the ball is rolling gently toward a flipper, you often don't need to flip at all. Let it come to you.

Learn to catch the ball (the cradle)

Hold a flipper up and a ball rolling onto it stops in the crook between the flipper and the wall. That's a cradle, and it's the single most useful skill in pinball. Once the ball is still, you're the one in charge: you can look at the table, read what's lit and pick your shot.

In Pocket Pinball the cradle works the way it does on a real machine. Keep the flipper held as the ball drops toward it, and keep holding. On a phone, rest your thumbs low on the screen. Taps down there always flip straight away, so a catch never turns into a nudge by accident.

Practise this before anything else. The default ball speed, Relaxed, slows the ball enough on a small screen that catching becomes easy to learn. Once it's a habit, try Classic, which is close to a real table. Shots you learn on one speed work the same on the other.

Aim from the cradle

Once the ball is cradled, let the flipper drop. The ball starts rolling down the flipper toward the tip, and where it is when you flip again decides where it goes.

• Flip early, while the ball is near the base of the flipper, and the shot goes up the same side of the table.
• Flip late, with the ball near the tip, and it crosses to the far side.
• Somewhere in between is the middle of the table.

Every table has a ramp or orbit you can reach from each flipper. Find one shot from the left and one from the right, from a cradle, and you can start most modes on purpose instead of by luck. A ramp shot that's too soft rolls back down, so hit ramps with the far end of the flipper.

Why balls drain, and how to stop it

Down the middle

A ball that drops between the flippers is usually one you flipped at while it was moving fast, so it came back down the centre. The cure is the cradle: fewer wild flips means fewer balls flying straight down.

Down the outlanes

The outlanes are the lanes on the far left and right that run past the flippers. Once a ball is in one, it's gone. Watch for a ball heading that way and give the table a sideways nudge before it drops in. Many tables also have a kickback that fires a ball back out of an outlane while it's lit, so keep track of whether yours is lit.

Off the slingshots

The triangular rubbers just above the flippers kick the ball sideways hard. When a ball pings between them, don't chase it with the flippers. Hold one up as a target and wait for it to settle.

Nudging without tilting

A nudge is a little shove of the whole table, and it's a normal part of pinball. Used well it saves balls from outlanes and frees a ball that's stuck. Used too much, the machine tilts: the flippers go dead and you lose that ball and its bonus.

In Pocket Pinball you nudge by flicking a finger up the middle of the screen, or with Up (or X and . for a sideways bump) on a keyboard. Three quick nudges are free. Keep shoving and you get two warnings, then a tilt. Thirty calm seconds take a warning away, so a nudge every couple of seconds is always safe.

Read the table, then score

Every pinball table has rules, and scoring big is about following them rather than hitting things at random. The lit inserts and arrows on the playfield tell you what to shoot next. In Pocket Pinball the bar at the top of the screen also spells out the current goal, and arrows light in the color of what they count for: green for a lock, gold for a jackpot, orange for the extra ball.

• Skill shot. Every table pays a bonus for a good opening shot. Watch what lights up as you launch: on some tables it's about how far you pull, on others it's a lit shot you have a few seconds to hit.
• Ball save. Each new ball has a 10 second ball save that starts once the ball leaves the shooter lane. That's the time to take a risky shot.
• Combos. Two different shots within 4 seconds is a combo, and combos multiply the next shot. A ramp that feeds the ball back to the other flipper sets the next shot up for you.
• Multiball. With several balls in play, don't try to keep all of them. Catch one, aim at the jackpot, and let the others take care of themselves.

A practice plan

1. Play a few games on Relaxed doing nothing but catching the ball on each flipper.
2. Learn one ramp or orbit from each flipper, from a cradle.
3. Start following the goal in the top bar instead of hitting whatever is closest.
4. Add nudges when a ball heads for an outlane.
5. Move up to Classic speed when catching feels easy.

Lantern Night, Star Port and Coral Deep are open from the start, and each table plays very differently. For table by table rules, see our Pocket Pinball guide. If you like aiming games, Brick Bloom and Pebble Putt use the same eye for angles.

Questions