Plunger is a free online retro pinball game you can play in your browser with no download or signup, running on a hand-rolled Verlet physics engine — no external libraries. The table features pop bumpers, a five-bank of drop targets, slingshot walls, rollover lanes, a plunger chute, stand-up targets, a captive ball pocket, a saucer hole, a jackpot target, and bonus flash targets. You start with three balls. When all three drain you're done, and your score goes to the leaderboard.
To launch the ball, hold Space (or tap the screen center on mobile) to charge the plunger power bar, then release. The left and right flippers are controlled with the Z and X keys (or Arrow keys), or by tapping the left and right 40% of the canvas on a touchscreen. A ball-save gives you one free return if the ball drains within five seconds of launch.
The ball, flippers, and bumpers all share one simulation loop built on Verlet integration — a position-plus-previous-position scheme that derives velocity implicitly each frame. Gravity is tuned to a gentle 0.25 pixels per frame so the ball arcs naturally without feeling floaty, and the flipper is modeled as a rotating line segment that transfers its angular velocity to the ball at the moment of contact. After early playtesting revealed that the ball could occasionally tunnel through thin walls at high speed, a maximum velocity clamp of about 18 pixels per frame was added to keep collisions reliable. The Web Audio context is created lazily on the first user gesture so iOS autoplay rules never break the launch. There is no external physics library — everything that moves on the table is hand-rolled in a few hundred lines of Canvas 2D code, which keeps the game lightweight enough to load instantly on any device.
Once you have the flippers under control, the table rewards players who choose a route. Three pop bumpers form a tight cluster at the top of the playfield, and consecutive hits on those bumpers within roughly one and a half seconds trigger a combo chain that pays 100, 200, 400, 800, and finally 1600 bonus points layered on top of the base bumper score. The left ramp is a one-thousand-point loop that teleports the ball back to the top of the playfield, which makes it the fastest way to re-stage a combo. The jackpot target in the upper center only lights when all three rollover lanes are complete and your multiplier is at two or higher — so a typical scoring run alternates rollover sweeps with ramp loops, then cashes in at the jackpot before the multiplier resets. If you enjoy this kind of table routing, our other pinball cabinet Tilt uses a similar combo-and-ramp loop with a different table geometry.
Plunger ships with a daily challenge mode that reseeds the bumper layout once per calendar day using a deterministic LCG, so every player who visits on the same day faces the same configuration and can compare scores fairly on the daily leaderboard. Four achievements — Bumper Frenzy, All Down!, Ramp Master, and Combo King — pop up as toast notifications the first time you unlock them in a session, and a tiered difficulty system raises the bonus multiplier from one times to one-and-a-half times at five thousand points and to two times at fifteen thousand. Pause is wired to both the Esc and P keys, and the tab-switch visibility API auto-pauses when you change windows so an unfinished ball does not silently drain. Looking for more physics-driven action? Try Fairway or jump straight into the other pinball table at Tilt.
Hold Space (or tap the center of the canvas on mobile) to charge the plunger. A power bar on the right fills as you hold. Release to fire. A short tap sends the ball slowly; a full charge fires it at top speed.
Ball save protects you on the very first drain of each ball within five seconds of launch. If the ball falls past the flippers during that window, it is returned to the plunger lane once — free of charge. Only one ball save fires per ball.
The multiplier starts at 1x and rises each time you light all three rollover lanes at the top. Completing the set advances to 2x, then 3x, then maxes out at 4x. Every score (bumpers, drops, slingshots, stand-up targets) is multiplied by the current value.
The captive ball is a small ball trapped in a pocket on the right side of the playfield. Hit it with the main ball to score 350 points per hit. After three hits the pocket resets and awards a 1500 point bonus. It is harder to reach than bumpers, so it scores proportionally more.
The jackpot target in the upper center only activates when all three rollover lanes are completed AND your multiplier is 2x or higher. When lit, it glows orange — shoot it for 5000 points. After scoring it resets and you must complete the rollovers again.
Yes — Plunger is free pinball that runs unblocked in any modern browser, on desktop or mobile, with no download, no signup, and no ads between balls.
