How to play
It is the evening of the village fair. A drummer keeps time on a wooden stage, the crowd sits on hay-bale benches, and two pullers take the rope over a mud pit. Pumpkin stands on the left, Plum on the right. Pull the red ribbon past the pole on your side and the round is yours. Win three rounds to win the match, or choose two or five on the menu.
- Pumpkin taps Space (or any of W A S D) to heave and holds it to dig in.
- Plum taps Enter (or any arrow key) to heave and holds it to dig in.
- Gamepads work too: any face button. The first pad is Pumpkin, the second Plum.
- On a phone, hold it sideways. Each player owns one half of the screen: tap to heave, hold to dig in.
- Playing alone? Choose vs Bot and pick Easy, Normal or Hard.
- P or Esc pauses. The game also pauses by itself when you switch tabs.
Heaving on the beat
Every heave is a single tap, and its power depends on how close the tap lands to the drum beat. A white ring closes in on the drum between beats, and the drummer’s arms come down on the beat itself:
- On the beat (within about 50 ms): a full heave. Each full heave in a row adds 25 percent, up to double power after four. Stars above your puller’s head show the streak.
- Close to the beat (within about 130 ms): a good heave, roughly two thirds of the power. It ends the streak.
- Off the beat: a weak heave, a quarter of the power, and it costs far more breath.
- Tapping again within a fifth of a second: “Too fast!”, barely any pull and the most expensive heave of all.
The drum speeds up slowly during a round, so the rhythm you locked in at the start drifts; keep watching the ring.
Breath and slipping
Under each puller is a bar in their colour: breath. Heaves cost breath, strong ones less than weak ones, and standing easy brings it back. If the bar runs out, your puller slips: the rope flies out of their hands, the ribbon jumps toward your rival, and for about a second you can do nothing at all. Even once you are back on your feet you cannot heave until the bar has climbed back to the white mark, so a slip is usually a lost round.
Digging in
Hold the button and your puller crouches and digs in. While you are dug in, your rival’s heaves move the rope only half as far, and the rope settles faster. Digging in has costs of its own: you cannot heave, it drains breath every moment, and each heave you soak up takes a chunk of breath too. Use it to ride out a rival’s streak, then let go and start your own.
Golden time
A round lasts 45 seconds. If nobody has won by then, golden time begins: the drum plays at its fastest and every heave hits 30 percent harder. After ten seconds of golden time the round goes to whichever side the ribbon is on; if it is still in the middle, nobody takes the round.
Strategy
- The beat is everything. Four taps on the beat beat eight taps off it, and they leave you with breath to spare.
- Rest when the rope is calm. Breath comes back only when you are neither heaving nor dug in. Skipping a beat or two costs you little if the ribbon is not moving.
- Dig in against a streak. When your rival’s stars pile up, hold the button through a beat or two. Their heaves are halved, their streak keeps costing them breath, and you can answer with a fresh streak of your own.
- Watch the rival’s bar. A puller close to empty is about to slip. Keep heaving on the beat and the slip does the rest.
- Against the Hard bot, it hits the beat almost every time and rests before it runs low, so you cannot out-mash it. Match its rhythm, dig in when it starts a streak, and win the round on the drift of the ribbon.
If you enjoy Tug of War, try Tunnel Twins or Turbo Twins next.
