Free tilt maze with a bot partner

How to start

1. Open bigboard.games on every device and tap Start a table on one of them.
2. The others join by themselves on the same Wi-Fi; elsewhere, scan the QR code or type the four-letter code.
3. Lay the devices edge to edge, screens up, as the drawing shows, and pick the game.

A partner with a part of its own

A device has one tilt sensor, so a bot can't share yours the way a friend does in the 2 player tilt maze. Instead it drives a part of the maze of its own. Alone, your screen is cut in two across its long side: your half follows your tilt, and the bot steers the other half.

The marble crosses between the halves through an opening in the wall between them, just as it rolls under the bezel from one device to the next. On the bot's half your tilt does nothing, so watch it steer, then take the marble back as it rolls onto yours.

How well the bot steers

The bot follows the level's route toward the hole, never faster than 120 millimetres a second, with an aim that's a little off and changes every half second or so. That's steady enough to clear nine levels in ten within par, and human enough to bump the walls on the way. Like the whack a mole bots, it makes human mistakes on purpose.

When the route doesn't cross its part, it rolls the marble back out to you. Its falls are its own on the end card, next to yours.

Alone or at a table

Alone, start a table on one phone or tablet and add a bot: your device runs it on its half of the screen. You share one score, with one marble and one clock.

At a table of friends each screen has one driver: the people sitting at it, else a bot seated there. Lay a spare device in the maze and seat the bot at it, so three friends and a bot make a co-op maze game for 4; the device the bot sits at runs it. A bot seated beside a person just rides along.

With bots: questions and answers