Balance Beam

What is Balance Beam?

A wooden beam sits on a fulcrum in front of your camera picture, and parcels start raining down onto it. Every parcel lands with a thud and shoves that end of the beam down — land two on the same side and the whole thing starts to go. You fix it by moving on the side of the picture where the beam is dropping: wave a hand there, lean, stomp, jump, anything, and that end lifts back up. There is nothing to aim and nothing to steer — a dotted line shows where your own middle is, so it plays the same whether you are standing back with your whole body in shot, sitting off to one side, or just waving one hand at the laptop. Your score is the number of seconds you keep the beam level, counting only while the meter at the top is in the green, so a steady hand is worth more than frantic flailing. Parcels sparkle away after a while, but they also slide downhill whenever you let the beam lean, which turns a small mistake into a big one fast. Lean too far and the beam topples, the parcels tumble off and the round ends — but so does a huge over-eager shove in the wrong direction, so the trick is small corrections, early. The longer you last the heavier and faster the parcels get, so the round always ends on you. HEAVY LOAD mode starts the parcels coming quicker, makes them heavier and shrinks the level band, so the clock only runs while you are genuinely steady.

How to play Balance Beam

1. Press Play now and allow the camera when the browser asks.
2. Settle before the countdown ends. A dotted line appears down the picture: that is where the game has decided your middle is. It finds you during those three seconds and then all but stops moving, so pick your spot first rather than wandering afterwards.
3. Watch which end of the plank is going down, and move on that side of the dotted line. Wave an arm, lean, stomp, stick a leg out. There is nothing to aim.
4. Stop as soon as the meter at the top is back in the green. This is the step everybody skips, and it is the commonest way to lose.
5. After it topples, SPACE sets up another round, H returns to the game list and M silences the music.

If the two short bars along the bottom stay empty while you wave, nothing is reaching the game. One click on the camera help page will tell you whether the camera ever started.

Where the seconds actually come from

The figure in the top left is the only score, and it moves only while the plank sits inside the green band on the meter — roughly ten degrees either side of flat on Normal. Nothing else pays: parcels are not points, and surviving a near-topple is not points. A two-minute round spent rocking scores less than a forty-second round spent flat.

Every five unbroken seconds in the green brings up a STEADY callout and a chime. It is a read-out rather than a bonus — the seconds count the same either way — but it is the quickest way to tell whether you are holding level or merely sweeping through the middle on every swing.

One thing the meter does not show: parcels begin creeping downhill once the plank passes about nine degrees, and on Normal that is still inside the green. The outer sliver of scoring time is already going wrong underneath you. On Hard the band is narrower than that point, so the clock stops before anything slides.

What decides a long run

• Where a parcel lands matters more than what it weighs. A heavy one landing close to the fulcrum is nearly harmless; a light one out near the tip is worth several of it. A small white marker appears on the plank beneath every falling parcel to show where it is headed, and you get roughly nine-tenths of a second before the thud. Heavier parcels are bigger on the way down and land on a lower note.
• Correct early, then stop. Working one side is stronger than a typical load of parcels, but only while you keep moving. The catch is that the plank does not stop when you do: the fulcrum is springy, so it overshoots and rocks two or three times before settling. Chase the rock and you drive it into the far side.
• You can tip an empty plank. Going flat out on one side and staying there will carry it past the failure angle with nothing loaded on it at all. Over-correcting is not a figure of speech here; it is the defeat most people meet first.
• A bad load is temporary. Parcels sparkle away by themselves after about eleven and a half seconds, and shed their weight gradually as they shrink rather than vanishing at once. Survive an awkward pair for ten seconds and they leave.
• The rescue is real but narrow. Once the plank is more than halfway to tipping, the next parcel lands on the high side most of the time. That is an emergency measure, not a safety net: a plank merely outside the green gets no help at all.

The two short green bars along the bottom show how much movement each side of the line is producing. If one is not filling while you believe you are working hard, you are on the wrong side of it — which happens most to a child who has drifted across the room, because the line is slow to follow.

What Heavy Load changes

Four things, and only one of them is the parcels.

• The green band narrows from about ten degrees either side of flat to about seven and a half, so the clock is stricter about what it calls level.
• The plank gives up sooner — it topples at around twenty-six degrees rather than thirty-one, leaving less space between trouble and over.
• Parcels arrive faster, starting about two seconds apart instead of two and a half and working down to roughly one every eight-tenths of a second rather than one a second.
• Your corrections lift a fraction less. Not enough to notice alone; plenty alongside the three above.

Heavy Load is therefore less about strength and more about never letting anything begin. On Normal you can usually rescue a lean you let develop; on Hard the failure angle arrives while you are still undoing the last one. Scores are kept separately, so fifteen seconds here stands on its own.

Who it suits, and what a grown-up should know

• It does not need room. Unlike the jumping games here, this one plays from a chair. An arm waved either side of yourself at a laptop is a full set of controls, and because the dotted line marks your middle rather than the screen's, a child sitting off to one side still has a left and a right.
• It pays for stillness, which is unusual here. Most of this site rewards moving as much as possible. This one rewards moving exactly as much as is needed and then stopping, which makes it a sensible thing to follow one of the loud ones with.
• Rounds end themselves. There is no timer, but parcels keep getting quicker for the first seventy-five seconds and heavier for ninety, so even a very good run finishes. Half a minute is a respectable start. When it goes, the plank takes a full second to topple before the result card.
• Very little reading. The countdown card carries three short sentences, and a one-line reminder sits on screen for nine seconds. After that the guidance is a large arrow and the words MOVE HERE over whichever half needs lifting, which a pre-reader can follow on shape alone.
• Noise. Bouncy music, a thud for each landing, a chime for every five-second streak and a crash at the end. M mutes the music only: the thuds and the chime are how you follow the round without staring at the meter, so they stay.

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