Dude Table Tennis.

How to play Dude Table Tennis

1. Press Play to load the table. Choose Chill, Club or Pro, pick Match to 11 or Practice, and start. The game remembers your choice next time.
2. When the ball waits above your paddle it is your serve. Click, tap or press Space. When the computer serves, it waits a moment and then sends the ball over.
3. Watch the ball and its shadow cross the net. Move the mouse, drag your finger, or hold Left and Right (or A and D) to put your paddle where the ball will reach your end. There is no swing button.
4. Meet the ball near the middle of the paddle to keep the rally going. Once you are comfortable, meet it off-centre to angle it towards the corner the computer is not covering.
5. Hold the mouse button or Space, or the Power button on a touch screen, to charge. When the bar reads Power shot ready, your next hit is a faster return. Keep tracking the ball while you charge.
6. Win points until you have at least eleven and lead by two. In Practice there is no score: serve again after every miss and chase your longest rally. Pause with the pause button or P at any time.

Make your move

About Dude Table Tennis

Dude Table Tennis is a calm, quick game of table tennis for the browser. A green table stands in a quiet club hall with a polished wood floor, soft window light and a flip scoreboard beside the table, all modelled in Blender for this site and seen from just behind your end. You hold the red paddle nearest to you; across the table the computer plays as a real figure holding the black one. There are no menus to learn and no strokes to memorise. You move sideways, your paddle takes the swing when the ball arrives, and every decision is about where to stand and which part of the paddle meets the ball.

Where the ball meets your paddle sets the direction of your return. Meet it in the middle and it goes straight back down the table. Meet it towards one edge and it flies off towards that side, so a little offset turns a safe return into a ball that drags the computer into a corner. Holding the mouse button, Space or the Power button builds a charge. When it reads Power shot ready (on a touch screen the Power button turns orange), your next hit is a noticeably faster ball, and power then takes a few seconds to recover. The ball keeps a soft shadow on the table and floor so you can judge how high it is and where it will land, and a fast ball leaves a short trail.

The computer plays by the same table. It reads your shot after a short reaction, moves at a limited speed and can only return what it reaches, and you can watch it do so: your opponent shuffles along the far end, coils and swings, tosses the ball up to serve and stretches for the ones that get away. Wide balls, power and long rallies make it more likely to slip: it may lunge and arrive a fraction late, clip the net, or send the ball long or wide, and each of those is your point. Long rallies also speed up a little with every hit, so patience and placement are rewarded without rallies going on forever. Chill is a friendly partner, Club is a fair match for most players, and Pro moves quickly, places the ball away from you and punishes loose returns.

Serves follow the real rule: the ball bounces once on the server’s side, clears the net and bounces on the far side. You serve first; after that service changes every two points, and from ten-all it changes after every point. A match goes to eleven and must be won by two, so eleven to ten plays on and twelve to ten ends it. The scoreboard beside the table flips over as each point is decided, a small lamp marks who is serving, and a strip on the board lights up at deuce and at match point. Practice mode drops the score entirely and the board shows your rally instead, so you can serve again after every miss and work on your angles or your longest rally.

Your best rally, your last difficulty and play mode, and the sound setting are kept in this browser on this device, and the best rally also appears as your personal best on this page. There is no account and nothing is sent anywhere. The game pauses by itself if you switch tabs or windows, and with reduced motion switched on in your system settings the fast-ball trail is switched off, the serve ball sits still instead of bobbing and the light in the hall holds steady. Otherwise the hall changes quietly while you play: the sun comes lower through the windows as the points add up, its patches stretching across the floor and warming toward evening, without ever crossing the table.

A little help for your next high score

• Start on Chill and aim for steady returns from the middle of the paddle. A rally teaches you how the ball travels better than a wild angle does.
• Move to where the ball will arrive, not where it is now. Its shadow on the table shows its path more clearly than the ball itself.
• Angles win points. When the computer is standing on one side, meet the ball on the edge of your paddle that sends it to the other.
• Charge while you move into position, and spend the power on a ball you can already reach comfortably. A power return to a corner is the hardest ball in the game to return.
• At deuce, play for two good points in a row rather than one spectacular one. Service changes after every point from ten-all, and a one-point lead never ends the match.

Good questions