3D Bumper Billiards

3D Bumper Billiards is a billiards game played from inside the cue ball, in a sealed room with no table or gravity. You fire pulses at 15 numbered balls; each shot sends the target forward and kicks you backward. Since shooting is also how you move, every shot sets up your next position and can send you into a pocket.

The moving room

The middle of each wall has a glowing bumper, and every corner holds a pocket inside a ring of lights. The balls never settle: bumpers send them back into play, the areas around pockets slow them down, and collisions reduce their speed. As a rack goes on, the room becomes more active. The break gives you a few clear moments, but how long they last varies each time.

Shots and scratches

You hold a button to charge a pulse and release it to fire at whatever you are facing. Sink the 6 off the far wall, for example, and you may drift backward into the pocket behind you. A scratch costs you a life in solo play or gives the other player the turn in a match; either way, you drop back into the room somewhere else.

Game modes

• On your own: clear three racks with three lives.
• Against the bot: play a best-of-three match. The bot has to turn, aim and fire the same pulse you do, and it can scratch too.
• Two players, one screen: play a best-of-three match, passing the mouse and keyboard back and forth.

Matches pit solids against stripes, and the first ball sunk determines each player's suit. Because the balls keep moving, there are no waiting turns: you can fire as often as you like. Your turn ends only when you sink one of your opponent's balls or scratch. Sinking your opponent's last ball wins the rack.

Arenas and rules

The five arenas are a cube, a tetrahedron, an octahedron, a dodecahedron and an icosahedron. Their corners serve as pockets, so the tetrahedron has four and the dodecahedron has twenty. You can change the size of any arena and adjust the physics, from slow drifting to pinball. The match winner chooses the felt, walls and metalwork for the rematch, and each arena has its own Hall of Fame.