Face Off
Guides

How to win

Every game Face Off plays, what the controls do, and the things that actually decide a round.

Target Pop Duel Putt Duel Nutty Glider Playing together
The rules every game shares. Quick Match picks one at random and both players get the same one. A match is first to three rounds. Every round is a race — you are not taking turns, you are both playing at the same time and the first to finish takes it. Leaving mid-match forfeits; losing connection gives you twenty seconds to come back.

Target Pop Duel

Archery · 6 balloons · 50s

You and your opponent each get your own field of six drifting balloons. Pop all six before they pop all six. You never see their field and they never see yours — the only thing that crosses is who finished first.

  1. Aim by tilting the phone. The camera follows the tilt, so you are pointing the device at the balloon rather than steering a cursor. Dragging on the screen aims too, and both feed the same thing — useful when you are lying down and the tilt has drifted.
  2. Hold to draw. Press and hold the draw control. Power builds over about six-tenths of a second, the bow pulls back, and the view zooms slightly as you reach full draw.
  3. Release to loose. The shot resolves the instant you let go, from wherever the crosshair is. The arrow you see flying afterwards is decoration — it cannot change the result.
  4. Clear all six. The round ends the moment either player's last balloon goes. If nobody clears in fifty seconds the round is a draw.
A short draw is a wasted arrow. Release below minimum power and the draw is simply cancelled rather than fired, so you lose the time but not the shot. Let it build.
Lead the drift. Balloons move continuously along their own paths. At range, aim where the balloon is going, not where it is.
Let the aim recentre. Leave the phone still for three seconds and the view eases back to neutral. Fighting a drifted gyroscope costs more time than resetting it.
Take the near ones first. Closer balloons are larger on screen and forgiving to hit. Bank the easy time early, then spend it on the far ones.

To win: pop six before they do. Speed beats precision here — a miss costs you one draw, but hesitating costs you the round.

Putt Duel

Mini-golf · same hole, both players

Both of you play the identical hole, built from the same seed, at the same time. First ball in the cup wins the round. The green is not flat: every hole has a constant fall plus two long swells, so the ball breaks.

  1. Drag on the ball to putt. Pull back to aim and set power — the further back, the harder. Drag anywhere else and you move the camera instead. Where the drag starts is what decides which one you get.
  2. Read the guide. The dotted line runs the real physics, not an approximation, so it curves exactly the way the ball will — including a bank off a rail. It shows roughly the first two and a half metres.
  3. Release to strike. The ball rolls, slows at a constant rate, and breaks with the slope as it loses pace.
  4. Hole it. Too fast and it lips out; the cup has to actually capture the ball.
Pace changes the line. A firm putt spends less time on the slope, so it breaks less. A soft one breaks much more. You aim differently for the same target depending on power.
The guide already knows. Because it accounts for your current power, changing power redraws the curve. Set power first, then aim along the line it gives you.
Stay out of the sand. Bunkers kill pace hard. Going around one is usually faster than going through it, even though it is further.
Rails are a tool. Banking off a wall is a legitimate line and the guide will show it. On a dogleg it is often the shorter route.

To win: sink it first. Since you both get the same hole, the round is decided by who reads the break correctly on the first attempt.

Nutty Glider

60 seconds · highest score wins

A flying squirrel, sixty seconds, and a scrolling world that gets meaner in three acts. You each fly your own run. Nothing is shared while you play — the scores are compared once you are both done.

  1. Tap to lift. Every tap costs one acorn. You start with six and can carry ten. Run out with none to collect and the next unavoidable drop ends your run — the acorn count is the difficulty.
  2. Collect as you fly. Acorns refill your lift. Berries are worth points. A golden acorn refills five and makes you briefly untouchable.
  3. Read the obstacles. Hazards end the run instantly — stumps, rocks, sprinklers, swooping birds, kite strings, bee swarms. Bounces are free height and are drawn in different colours by strength.
  4. Survive to sixty. Score is what you collected plus two points for every second you stayed up.
Bounce instead of tapping. Every bounce is free — it costs no acorn. A run that uses the level for height has acorns left when the third act arrives.
Dive onto a bird's back. It is the strongest bounce in the game and it returns most of your speed, so arriving fast is rewarded. It is the single biggest move available.
A leaf catches, it does not launch. It absorbs almost all of a dive. Aim for one when you need to stop falling, not when you need height.
A cloud puff buys time, not height. A modest shove, but it keeps you gliding noticeably longer — which is worth more than altitude when your acorns are low.
The colours are the warning. The hazard bird is dark; the bounce bird is blue. One ends your run and one launches you, and at speed the colour is all you have.
Don't hoard, don't burn. Acorns you never spend score nothing, but spending three in a second drops you onto the ground a beat later. Spend one at a time.

To win: score higher. Surviving the full sixty seconds is worth 120 points on its own, so finishing the run usually beats a risky sprint for pickups that ends early.

Playing with people you know

There are three ways into a match, and they differ only in who you end up against.

  1. Quick Match pairs you with whoever else is queueing, and the server picks the game. Free.
  2. Challenge a friend from their row in the Friends tab. It opens a room for two and sends them an invite straight away — they get a notification and can join from it. Free.
  3. Host a party for three to five players. Invite several friends at once, or share the room's six-digit code with anyone. This one needs Face Off Plus; a one-against-one match never does.
Invites reach people who aren't looking. An invite arrives as a notification, as a card in the app if it is open, and as an entry you can open later. You do not have to be watching for it.
The code is the fallback. If someone is not on your friends list yet, share the room code instead — six digits, typed on the Play tab.
Practice is free and private. Practice mode under Profile plays any of the three solo. Nothing is recorded, so nothing you do there touches your stats.