How to play

Quick start

1. Open the game in a desktop browser (Chrome or Edge work best).
2. On the Play tab, under How do you swing?, choose Phone, Hand cam, Paddle cam, Mouse or Controller. The little animation shows the swing. For a camera control, the Camera check walks you through the setup the first time.
3. Press the big Play button for a practice match with your last settings, or open Match setup to pick your CPU opponent, court and length. Training, World Tour and Play a friend are the cards below it. The tabs along the top (Q / E, or the controller’s shoulder buttons) lead to the Store, Challenges, Locker, Leaderboard and Settings.
4. Your player runs to the ball on their own. You swing when the ball arrives: the screen shows Forehand or Backhand as it comes.

The controls

Phone racket

The phone’s motion sensors read your swing, so it feels closest to real tennis. In the game, choose Phone and press Connect phone, then scan the code with the phone’s camera. The racket page opens in the phone’s browser: tap Start and allow motion access. Hold the phone like the handle of a racket, then swing a forehand and a backhand so it learns your grip.

Your hand at the webcam

Choose Hand. The game tracks your racket hand with an on-device hand tracker. Stand about 2 m from the camera so your head and shoulders fit the outline and your hand stays in the picture on both sides of your body. Swing across your body; taking the hand back first is fine, it counts as the wind-up.

Ping-pong paddle

Choose Paddle, hold the paddle’s face in the circle and press Lock paddle color. Brightly coloured rubber (red or blue) works best; black rubber can’t be tracked. If the picture shows other patches of the paddle’s colour, move those things out of view or lock the other side of the paddle.

Mouse and keyboard

The mouse is a racket: swipe it through the ball. A quick flick of the mouse, a swipe on a laptop touchpad or a finger across a touch screen is the swing, with no click. Your player runs to the ball; you swipe as it reaches you. A bar at the bottom of the screen shows the ball running to the middle: peak the swipe, the fastest moment of it, as it gets there.

• How hard? Power is relative to your own usual swipe, which the game learns from your first few hits. Your usual swipe is a solid rally ball; about 40% faster is flat out, and misses more.
• The mouse is captured while you play, so the cursor is hidden and a swipe never hits the edge of the screen. Esc lets go and pauses. If your browser doesn’t allow it, swipes follow the cursor instead. Settings → Controls → Capture the mouse turns it off.
• Moving the mouse about doesn’t swing. Only a quick flick does, once per swipe. The follow-through and bringing the mouse back are not swings.
• Touchpad or gentle swipes? Raise Settings → Controls → Swipe sensitivity. Prefer clicking? Set Mouse swing to Click. Keyboard aim can move the aim to WASD.
• Left-handed? Set Plays to Left. A swipe to the left is a shot to the left for everyone: swiping across your body is cross-court for either hand.

Game controller

Plug in a PlayStation, Xbox or Switch controller, or pair it over Bluetooth, and press a button: browsers only show a controller once one of its buttons has been pressed. The menus work with it straight away (D-pad or left stick to move, ✕ / A to pick, ○ / B to go back), and the menu offers to switch to Controller for the shot buttons below. You can also choose Controller yourself under Controls. Any pad your browser reports in the standard layout works, including the DualSense, DualShock 4, Xbox, Switch Pro and Steam Deck.

Hold a shot button to charge it, and let go as the ball arrives. The release is your swing: an early or late release pulls the ball across or pushes it the other way, like a mouse swipe. A quick tap is a solid medium ball and a full charge (about 0.8 seconds) is flat out. A small meter by your player shows the charge, and a marker on your opponent’s court shows where the ball is going. Your player runs to the ball; the left stick aims.

• The left stick aims where you let go. Left is the left of the screen and right the right, whichever stroke or hand you play; up hits deeper, down plays a shorter, sharper angle, and centred plays a safe ball through the middle. The marker follows the stick, and a stick that springs back as your thumb lets go keeps its aim for a moment. Aiming close to the lines at full power misses more.
• To serve, press a shot button to toss, keep holding it and let go near the top of the toss. ✕ / A is a flat serve, ○ / B a kick and □ / X a slice; the left stick aims wide, at the body or at the T, and R1 / RB goes flat out for the lines.
• On a Switch controller the buttons are matched by position, so the bottom face button does what ✕ / A does above, the right one ○ / B, the left one □ / X and the top one △ / Y.
• Feel it. Contact rumbles the controller, harder on big hits, with a small tick when you released at exactly the right moment.
• Settings → Controls has Controller scheme (Buttons, or Stick flick, where you flick the right stick to swing), Swap sticks for left-handed players, Power meter, Aim marker, Aim style (Zones snaps the stick to left, right, up, down and the diagonals; Free uses the exact angle), Stick dead zone and Vibration. Test the controller there shows every button and the live charge and aim.

How shots work

• Timing aims the shot. Swing early to pull the ball cross-court, late to send it down the line.
• The shape of the swing sets the spin. Low to high adds topspin, high to low slices. (With the mouse, swipe up or down; on a controller, pick the shot button.)
• Speed is power. A faster swing hits harder, and a hard shot misses more often.
• Serving: toss first, then swing. With the phone, tap the screen or lift the phone to toss; on camera, raise your hand (or paddle) above the toss line; with the mouse, flick up (or click); on a controller, press a shot button. Swing as the ball drops (on a controller, let go of the button near the top of the toss).

Matches follow normal tennis scoring. Choose a tiebreak, a short set (first to 4 games) or a full set, and a CPU level: Rookie, Club or Pro. Close calls get a line review, and big points get an instant replay you can skip with a swing or Space.

Camera tips

Webcam tracking is only as good as the picture. These make the biggest difference:

• Light in front of you, not behind. Face a window or a lamp. A bright window behind you turns you into a silhouette.
• More light means less lag. In a dim room the camera slows down and swings arrive late.
• Stand about 2 m back, so your whole swing stays in the picture.
• A plain background helps the paddle tracker: nothing else in the paddle’s colour.
• Run the Camera check. It shows what the camera sees, measures its frame rate and delay, and lets you set the sensitivity and a timing offset.

Hand tracking downloads a small model the first time (a few seconds), then runs on your computer. Camera frames never leave your device.

Playing online

Choose Play a friend online and press Create a match link. Send the link (or the five-letter code) to your friend. When they open it and press Join, the match starts. Each of you can use any control. The two browsers connect directly, so a steady connection matters more than a fast one.

Levels, Fuzz and saving

Every match earns XP and Fuzz, the game’s currency, with bonuses for aces, winners, long rallies, clean timing and the first win of the day. Levelling up unlocks courts, times of day and pros; Fuzz buys outfits, racket paint and more in the Store. Daily challenges and achievements add goals of their own.

Progress saves automatically in your browser, on this device. Private windows forget it when they close, and clearing the site’s data deletes it.

Troubleshooting

Still stuck? Tell us which browser and controls you use (and which controller, if any) and what happens.