Far End
Two people, one screen, one puck. Touch your end and that paddle is yours.
What it is
Air hockey for two people on the same screen. It is the only game on this site two can play at once, and that is the entire reason it exists.
The table runs along the long edge of whatever you are holding. Upright, the goals are top and bottom; turn it sideways and they are left and right. The far end's score is printed upside down, because somebody is sitting there.
There is no mode to choose
Every paddle plays itself until a hand touches its half of the table. From that moment it belongs to that person, and the computer does not ask for it back.
So one person gets a game against the computer by touching one end, and two people get a game against each other by touching both. Nobody agrees on anything first, and a second person can join in the middle of a rally rather than waiting for the point to finish.
Left alone it plays itself. Here, a finished match waits for a tap to play again. On a shared screen in kiosk mode it goes back to the title twelve seconds after somebody wins, or thirty seconds after a match is left untouched, and starts quiet for the next person, so a screen nobody is standing at is always doing something. A finger still on the glass holds it either way.
First to five, and the puck never sits still
Five goals wins. After each one the puck is served sideways rather than placed at rest, which keeps the table looking alive without handing anybody a free goal: a serve nobody touches drifts across and reaches neither net.
How to play
- Take a paddleTouch your end of the table
- Move itSlide your finger in your half
- Start, or play againTap anywhere
- Sound on or offThe speaker, bottom right
One finger per half. A second finger in a half that somebody already has is ignored rather than taking the paddle over, so a stray hand can't steal it mid-rally.
On a desktop the mouse moves whichever paddle's half it is in. The only key is M, which turns the sound on and off. But a mouse is one pointer and this game is built for two: the two-player game needs a touchscreen.
The opponent
The computer paddle moves at about two-thirds of the puck's top speed and steers on a slightly stale reading of where the puck is. It is beatable by construction rather than by a difficulty setting: fifteen straight shots swept across the mouth of its goal put two to four past it.
What isn't settled yet
Whether two people who have never seen it can walk up, take an end each and start playing without either of them asking a question. Nothing that runs in a browser can test that.
Posture is the other one. Two players at either end of a phone is a very different proposition from two at either end of a tablet lying flat on a table, and only the second has actually been thought through.
Build Log
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Build 6
The win screen waited for a tap forever, so an unattended screen froze on a result. It returns to the title twelve seconds later and hands both paddles back to the computer, but never while a finger is on the glass. Someone still touching the screen has not left, whatever the clock says.
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Build 2
A puck placed at rest after a goal reads as a frozen game rather than a serve waiting on you. Drifting it toward the conceding player is worse: drag is slow enough that an untouched puck coasts 260 units across a 200-unit table and scores on them. Serves run sideways instead.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine and no embedded typefaces: it uses whichever fonts your device already has. Cover drawn from the game’s own table, paddle and puck code.
Far End is original work by Launchway Games.