How do you play Wobble?

The marble sits on a plate balanced on a point, so it always wants to roll off. Tilt your phone gently to push it back toward the centre. The instability grows every ten seconds, and the run ends when the marble leaves the plate. Your score is the time you lasted.

Why does the marble always fall eventually?

The plate is an unstable equilibrium, like balancing a pencil on its tip: any tiny drift grows unless corrected, and the game keeps making the drift stronger and adding gusts. Nobody survives forever, which is exactly what makes a long run worth bragging about.

What is a good time in Wobble?

Most first runs end inside twenty seconds. Forty seconds means your corrections have become small and early. A minute is genuinely steady hands, and the Storm and Chaos phases beyond that are where personal records live.

Can I play without a gyroscope?

Yes. On devices without motion sensors, moving your mouse pushes the marble instead, and arrow keys give small nudges. The sensor version is the real test of steady hands, though.

Wobble - How Long Can You Keep the Marble On?

A marble, a plate balanced on a point, and your hands. The plate wants to tip it off, and every ten seconds it wants it more. Most people don't last twenty seconds. Your score is time.

Time 0.0s

Phase Calm

Best --

Wobble

Keep the marble on the plate by tilting against its drift. Small, early corrections. The wobble grows every ten seconds until you lose.

On iPhone, allow the motion prompt. On desktop, the mouse pushes the marble. Nothing is uploaded.

The pencil-on-its-tip game

Wobble is an unstable equilibrium, the same physics as balancing a pencil on its point. Left alone, any microscopic drift of the marble feeds on itself and accelerates toward the edge. Your tilt input is the only thing fighting that, and the fight is rigged: every ten seconds the instability constant rises, and gusts start shoving the marble sideways at random. Nobody survives forever. The game is honest about this, which is why a long run means something.

What makes it compulsive is that failure is always, visibly, one correction late. The marble never teleports off the plate; you watch it get away from you over half a second, and the replay in your head says "earlier, gentler". That thought is the restart button. Runs are short, the timer is huge, and beating your best by two seconds feels like a personal record, because it is one.

It is also, quietly, a fine-motor exercise: the winning technique is many small early corrections rather than big rescues, the same skill the surgeon's game and the steady-hand wire loop test. Like everything on this site, it runs entirely on your device: tilt data is never transmitted, and your best time is stored locally.

How to play

Tap Play with the phone held comfortably. That pose becomes neutral.
Watch the marble's drift, not the marble. Correct the moment it picks a direction, with the smallest tilt that works.
Survive the phase changes. Every ten seconds the plate gets meaner: Calm, Breeze, Gusts, Storm, then Chaos.
When it rolls off, tap once. You are already balancing again.

Features

Pure skill, zero luck early

The first twenty seconds are deterministic: only your corrections matter. The gusts arrive after you have earned them.

Named phases

Calm, Breeze, Gusts, Storm, Chaos. "I reached Storm" is a sentence people say to each other.

Instant retry

The marble rolls off, you tap, you are balancing again. No menus between you and one more try.

Private by design

Tilt readings never leave your device. Your best time lives in local storage, not on a server.

Frequently asked questions

What's a good time?

Twenty seconds is normal, forty is steady, a minute is bragging rights. Storm starts at thirty; few people see Chaos at forty-five.

The marble drifts even when I hold still.

That is the game: the plate is unstable by design. But if it always drifts the same direction from the start, tap Re-center to reset your neutral pose.

Can I play on a laptop?

Yes; your mouse position pushes the marble. It is easier than the sensor version, so phone times are the honest ones.

Nothing happens when I tilt.

Run the gyroscope test; it diagnoses in one second which layer is blocking sensor data.

🔎 Verify it yourself: nothing uploads

Open DevTools (F12 → Network) while you play — no request ever carries your motion data or time. Load the page, go to airplane mode, keep balancing.