How to Beat Your Own Best Score (and Keep Your Temper)
Playing more is not the same as getting better. Seven habits that actually move a high score, drawn from a great many failed runs.
Every ticket on Html5Game.sbs shows your best score for that game. The moment a number appears there, a quiet contest begins. Here is what we have learned about winning it, mostly by losing.
1. Warm up, and do not count it
Your first few rounds are nearly always your worst. Your hand is cold, your eyes have not found the rhythm and you are still thinking about whatever you were doing before.
Play three rounds that do not matter. Do not look at the scores. Then start trying.
2. Work on one thing per run
"Play better" is not an instruction your hands can follow. Pick one specific thing and think about only that.
In Gap Runner, spend a run looking only at the next bar and never at the ball. In Keep It Up, spend a run tapping only under the centre of the ball. In Wheel Catch, count your taps out loud.
You may well score worse on that run. It does not matter. You are building a habit, and the score follows a few rounds later.
3. Look where the trouble is coming from
In almost every game here, beginners stare at the thing they control. Experienced players stare at the thing that is about to happen.
- In Orbit Dodge, watch the centre, where the sparks begin.
- In Cave Copter, watch the right-hand edge, where the cave arrives.
- In Ring Pong, look along the ball's path to where it will meet the ring.
- In Tile Runner, work in the upper half of the screen.
Your own dot will take care of itself. You know where it is without looking.
4. Find the reason, not the excuse
After a run ends, take two seconds before you tap again and name what went wrong. Not "bad luck". Something you could do differently: "I reversed twice", "I let go late", "I guessed".
If you get the same answer three times in a row, you have found the thing to practise. That is far more useful than fifty rounds on autopilot.
5. Stop when you set a best
This is the hardest advice to follow. You have just beaten your record. You feel sharp. Surely the next one will be even better.
It almost never is. A best score usually comes at the peak of a session, and what follows is a slide. Close the tab while you are ahead and come back later. You will begin the next session remembering a win.
6. Stop when you are angry, too
There is a recognisable state where each loss makes you restart faster and play worse. You are no longer trying to improve. You are trying to get even with a ball.
The sign is tapping to restart before the game-over screen has finished appearing. When you catch yourself doing that, the session is over. Nothing good happens after that point.
7. Little and often
Five minutes a day for a week will do more than one long evening. Your hands seem to sort things out between sessions. It is common to come back the next morning and beat, on the second try, a score you could not touch the night before.
The game page keeps a count of rounds played, next to your best and your last score. It can be sobering. It is also a fair measure of how much practice a score really cost.
Pick the right game for your mood
Not every game suits every moment.
- Wide awake and focused? Try the ones that punish a single slip: Tile Runner, Pin Spinner.
- A bit tired? Pick something with three lives, such as Ring Snap or Quick Pads. One mistake will not end it.
- Short on time? Tap Sprint is ten seconds, start to finish.
- Want something calm? Fill Line has no enemies and no clock.
Keep it in proportion
These are small HTML5 games made for spare minutes. A best score is a pleasant thing to have and no more than that. If chasing one stops being fun, the game has stopped doing its job, and the right move is to go and do something else.
Then come back tomorrow and beat it on the second try.