Do not flip

How to play Do not flip

There is a panel on the wall with one big switch and a sign above it that says not to flip it. Tap the switch, or press Space or Enter, and flip it anyway. Something always flips it back. At first that is a small hand from a hatch, but every flip brings a new reaction and they get stranger as you go. The hand gets slower and grumpier, a second switch turns up that is wired the wrong way round, the panel starts talking back, the lights go out and the switch reappears somewhere else, a tiny official arrives with forms, the switch gets a lid you have to lift first, the hand brings a friend and in the end the room itself starts to tilt. The counter and your rank sit at the top. At one hundred flips there is a small ceremony, you get a medal for the wall and the panel quietly starts over with a new sign. Walk away at any time to see how far you got and challenge a friend, your count is saved for next time.

Tips

• The story runs in the same order for everyone, so you can compare notes on what happens at flip fifty
• A few rare visitors turn up at random in each run, and the end card counts how many of them you have seen
• Once the lid arrives it takes two taps per flip, one to lift it and one to flip
• Your rank goes from Obedient to Curious, Restless, Persistent, Stubborn, Unemployable and Ungovernable
• Every finished run hangs a medal on the wall and puts up a new sign
• There are small clicks and thunks, but everything works the same with the sound off

About Do not flip

Machines whose only job is to switch themselves off go back to the early 1950s, when Marvin Minsky came up with the idea and Claude Shannon built one for his desk at Bell Labs. Do not flip turns that old joke into a story of one hundred flips. Every reaction was written and drawn for this game in its own flat style: a dusty blue panel on an oat striped wall, a pink sign, a lilac hand with a striped mustard sleeve, a teal friend with a dotted coral sleeve and a tiny official in a tall hat. More than seventy reactions run in a fixed order that escalates chapter by chapter, plain flip backs fill the gaps, and a handful of rare ones are mixed in at random, so no two runs look exactly the same. Everything is drawn in code and the sounds are synthesised in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere; your count, your medals and the rare moments you have seen are saved on your own device.

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