Last Marble — a marble elimination race

Last Marble is a marble elimination race you set up and then watch. Choose how many colors take part, from 2 to 48: past twenty-four come patterned marbles, rainbow, blinking, striped, two-tone, polka dot, swirled, gold and silver, galaxy, neon, cat's eye and checkered, rolling as they go. Then choose how many marbles each one gets: one each by default, so every marble is a whole team, or up to twenty, or race with flags instead of colors: more than a hundred countries, drawn at random from the whole world or from one continent, your own country first. Tap the number to pick it from a list or type it. Tap a flag to pick any other country from the list, by continent or by name, or tap Names to give each one a name: a friend, a team, anyone. Every leg is a new machine, never the same one twice in a race: spiky stars that turn between two ramps, giant gears, spoked wheels, deep basins, mixers, drums, switchback ramps, mountains with tight valleys, and bottlenecks where the whole crowd squeezes through one big star, one wheel, a trapdoor or a seesaw. Now and then comes a special level with its own look: a peg forest, a great wheel, a whirlpool, trapdoors, a staircase or windmills. At the bottom, the finish changes too: splitters that send each marble left or right, one big drum in the middle, twin drums on the sides, three drums, rows of pegs or spikes, or bins. Each marble lands on green or on red: green counts for its color, red sends it back to the top. Each leg the last marbles still in the machine burst into fireworks, about one in five and never fewer than three, until the very last legs. When only a few places are left, a big countdown shows them: five, four, three, two, last place. The fewer marbles are left, the bigger they get and the slower they fall, so you can follow your color to the end and wonder which one will drop next: a color is out when it has no marble left, and the last color with marbles wins.

How to play

Each leg brings a new random machine; if you don't like it, press Random machine for another one, or press Auto and let the legs follow each other. A leg lasts at most a minute and a half, a little more in slow motion when only a few marbles are left. Tap a color on the board to give it a name: your friends, your pets, your favorite snacks. Then press the big Start button and cheer. During the leg, tap to bump the marbles around your finger, swipe to push them along, and tap a wheel to reverse it. Speed changes the pace during the race.

Why it's satisfying

Hundreds of glass marbles clacking through a machine is hypnotic, and picking a color turns every leg into a small drama: the count climbing, your color stuck behind a trapdoor, the last place taken at the very last second.

About

Last Marble is one of Alcy's forty-nine free contemplative micro-games. More physics toys: Domino, Gears, Orbit.