Reflex Rally

About Reflex Rally

Reflex Rally is not a rally game despite the name. There is exactly one ball in play at a time, it is deliberately fired away from wherever your paddle currently is, and the exchange ends the moment you return it. Then the next one comes, slightly faster.

After every successful return the game reports your start time: the interval between the ball being released and your paddle beginning to move, measured on your device's own high-resolution clock. That figure is a choice reaction rather than a simple one, because you have to work out which way to go before you go.

How to play Reflex Rally

1. The far end serves automatically. There is no serve for you to make.
2. Move with the arrows, A and D, or by dragging anywhere on the table.
3. Get the blade in front of the ball before it passes your baseline. Contact returns it automatically.
4. Each successful return raises the speed of the next ball, up to a ceiling.
5. Your start time in milliseconds is shown after every return and in the HUD.
6. Three lives. The run ends on the third miss.

Controls

On a touchscreen: Drag anywhere on the table to slide your paddle, or use the left, right and hit buttons under the game.

Gameplay mechanics

How the ball is aimed at you

The serve does not pick a random point on the table. It reads which half you are currently standing in and fires into the other one, at a distance between sixteen and forty-two per cent of the table's width from the centre. That guarantees the ball is always away from you and always requires a decision about direction.

It is what makes the reported figure a choice reaction. A ball fired at random would sometimes come straight to you, and those balls would flatter the measurement without testing anything.

The speed ramp and its ceiling

The first ball leaves at 152 world units per second and each successful return adds 3.4 to that, up to a ceiling of 280. The ceiling is reached after roughly thirty-eight returns.

Beyond that point the game does not get faster, which is deliberate — an uncapped ramp would eventually make the game impossible for everybody at the same speed, which measures nothing useful. With a cap, a long run is about maintaining concentration at a fixed high pace.

How the timing is measured

The clock starts at the frame in which the ball is released and stops at the first frame in which your paddle's position has changed by more than a twentieth of a world unit. It therefore includes the release frame, your own reaction, your input device's latency and the frame in which the game noticed.

That makes it a useful comparison between your own runs on the same device and a poor comparison against anybody else's hardware. It is not a clinical measurement and nothing on this site treats it as one.

Ball physics

The ball carries a height as well as a table position, so it arcs, bounces off the surface and can clip the net. When a paddle strikes it, the engine picks a landing point and solves for the exact launch velocity that reaches it, which is why the aim marker on the table is honest. In Reflex Rally the physics run at the site's standard values, which makes it a good reference point for the variants that change them.

Paddle mechanics

The paddle is a blade that slides along your baseline. Four numbers decide how it feels: how fast it moves, how hard the ball leaves the face, how accurately a shot lands where you aimed it, and how high above the table it can still make contact. In Reflex Rally the blade is 16 world units wide and travels at 142 units per second.

Where the ball meets the blade steers the return. A contact at the centre sends the ball straight down the table, and a contact at the edge sends it roughly 26 units off centre. Holding a direction key at the moment of contact adds a smaller correction on top.

Serving

You never serve here. The far end serves every ball, deliberately away from wherever your paddle is standing, with a short gap between attempts so you can reset your grip.

Scoring

• Each return pays a base value plus a bonus for the ball's speed and one for how quickly you started moving.
• Your quickest start of the run is reported when it ends.
• Every clean return is worth points, and a well-timed one is worth more than an ordinary one.
• Consecutive successful actions build a combo multiplier that caps at eight and lapses if you stop scoring.
• Your best score and your longest rally are saved in this browser and shown on the ready screen.

Difficulty

Reflex Rally is rated Hard overall. Reads the ball quickly, covers the table well and punishes a loose return, with an error rate around seven per cent. Use the difficulty buttons above the table to change the opponent at any time; restarting applies the change immediately. Expert is deliberately hard rather than impossible.

Tips for a better score

1. Watch the far paddle rather than the ball. Its position tells you which half the ball is going to before the ball exists, and that is worth about a tenth of a second.
2. Do not guess. A wrong guess costs the full width of the table; a start fifty milliseconds later but in the right direction almost always arrives in time.
3. Stand slightly off-centre on purpose. The serve fires away from you, so standing left means you know the next ball is coming right.
4. Keep your hand on the keys between balls. The 0.55-second gap is not long enough to reset your grip.
5. Expect your figures to vary. Balls fired close to where you already are produce the slowest starts, because you have to decide whether to move at all.

Features

• One ball at a time, always fired away from your current position
• Per-return start time reported in milliseconds from your own device clock
• Speed ramp from 152 to a 280 ceiling across roughly 38 returns
• Score weighted by both ball speed and how quickly you started
• Best start time reported at the end of every run
• Three lives, with the run ending on the third miss

Reflex Rally — frequently asked questions