Slingshot Launcher is a five-level browser game that places one circular target per level on a fixed 640 by 360 playfield, awards exactly 200 points per hit, and tops out at 1,000 points when all five targets are cleared. You aim by dragging the projectile away from the target and releasing it; the game reverses your drag into a launch vector, computes a deterministic trajectory with constant downward screen gravity, and either registers a hit on the first segment that crosses the target circle or leaves a dotted path behind so you can read what just happened. The same five levels, the same five targets, and the same winning pulls repeat on every visit, so a launch that lands after one Restart will land again. There is no animation timer that can drift under a slow tab, no account, no server calculation, and no upload of coordinates, paths, or scores. Try it directly in Slingshot Launcher and the rest of this guide explains exactly what each pull does, why the trajectory looks the way it does, and how the controls differ between mouse, touch, and keyboard play.
The five-level task Slingshot Launcher sets up
Each of the five levels places a single circular target in a fixed location on the 640 by 360 playfield, with one projectile sitting at a fixed launcher origin. Your job is simple on paper: pick a pull direction, release the projectile, and make the computed path cross the target circle. Because there is exactly one target per level, a hit always advances the score by 200 points and reveals the next level's target, so the maximum possible finish is the five-level total of 1,000 points. The five levels, the five target centers, and the five target radii are fixed game parameters, not randomized draws. Nothing about the level order, the launcher origin, the gravity value, the velocity scale, or the projectile radius changes between runs, which is why a Restart reproduces the exact same conditions you were just playing in. For readers who want a deeper walkthrough of the level-by-level route, the Slingshot Game 5-levels walkthrough covers the progression; this article focuses on the mechanics you control.
The drag-opposite rule and how screen coordinates shape the launch
The launch rule follows the familiar slingshot idea: the projectile travels opposite the direction of your drag. Concretely, the game subtracts your released pull point from the fixed launcher origin to get a drag vector, then reverses that vector and multiplies it by a product-authored velocity scale. Pulling the projectile to the left therefore produces a positive horizontal launch velocity, so the projectile moves to the right after release. Pulling downward produces a negative vertical launch velocity in the screen-coordinate system, where smaller y values appear higher on the display, so a downward drag actually sends the projectile up the screen toward anything above the launcher. This is the same vertical-screen convention used by canvas APIs and 2D game engines: y grows downward, so negative vertical velocity is upward motion. The allowed pull length is capped so pointer, touch, and keyboard players share the same authored play range, which is why the same drag distance always produces the same launch velocity regardless of input device. Once you understand that direction reverses and that screen y is inverted, every dotted path in the game becomes predictable.
How to play and hit every target for 1,000 points
- Open Slingshot Launcher and wait for the projectile and target to settle into level one; the launcher origin and target center are fixed for the level.
- Press on the projectile with your pointer, stylus, or finger, then drag it away from the target. The direction you pull becomes the opposite of the launch direction, so aim your drag in the mirror image of where the target sits relative to the launcher.
- Release the drag at a distance that feels within the capped range. A short pull produces a low-velocity arc that drops fast; a longer pull produces a flatter, faster path that travels farther before gravity pulls it down.
- Watch the dotted path the game computes. If the line crosses the target circle, the level clears and you earn exactly 200 points before the next level appears.
- If the path misses, study where the dotted line went, then make a second pull. You can drag again with the pointer, or focus the playfield and step the pull point in five-pixel increments with the Arrow keys before pressing Space or Enter to launch.
- Repeat until all five levels are cleared. The score is the number of targets hit multiplied by 200, so a perfect run finishes at exactly 1,000 points with no bonus and no rounding.
- If two different normalized pulls both miss, the run locks and the game asks you to Restart; the same failed pull never consumes two distinct attempts.
Reading the dotted preview versus the computed path
Two different dotted-style lines appear in the play area, and they answer two different questions. A lighter preview line responds to your current pull in real time and shows roughly where the projectile would travel if you released right now; this is the line you read while you are still deciding. A dotted computed path appears after release and shows the actual trajectory the game just calculated. The dotted computed path is what the collision test used, so when a hit does not register but the lighter preview looked close, the difference is usually a margin-of-error issue between the preview's rounded visual and the exact segment-by-segment collision check. The game samples a complete deterministic path immediately rather than running an unstable frame-by-frame physics engine, which means the dotted path you see after release is the same path the collision test examined; there is no separate animation step that could disagree with the rule check. Reading the dotted path after a miss is the fastest way to choose a corrective pull, because the next pull can simply aim for the target through a mirrored point relative to the launcher origin.
Pointer, touch, and keyboard control side-by-side
The same launch rule applies across all three input methods, but the way you set the pull point differs. Pointer and touch players start directly on the projectile, drag it across the play area, and release; the range uses Pointer Events, so the same drag works with a mouse, trackpad, stylus, or finger. Keyboard players focus the range first, then move the pull point in five-pixel steps with the Arrow keys and press Space or Enter to launch. Keyboard handling is scoped to the focused range, so arrow keys and Enter on the Restart button do not launch a shot.
| Input method | How the pull is set | How the launch fires |
|---|---|---|
| Mouse, trackpad, or stylus | Pointer-down on the projectile, drag away from the target, release inside the capped range | Automatic on pointer up |
| Touch | Finger-down on the projectile, drag away from the target, release inside the capped range | Automatic on touch end |
| Keyboard (range focused) | Arrow keys step the pull point in five-pixel increments | Space or Enter, or the Launch aimed shot button |
Because the allowed pull length is capped, pointer drags and keyboard arrows operate in the same authored range, and the Launch aimed shot button offers an explicit activation route for keyboard users who prefer a button press over Space or Enter. Invalid, non-finite, too-short, or overlong pulls leave the launch state unchanged, so the game does not silently consume a launch on a stray drag that ended past the cap.
How the deterministic trajectory stays the same after Restart
The trajectory you see is not a real-time simulation. When you release, the game computes the full path synchronously using the component-form projectile-motion equations described by OpenStax in its projectile-motion chapter and independently cross-checked by Boston University Physics: horizontal position equals initial x plus horizontal velocity times time, and vertical position equals initial y plus vertical velocity times time plus one half of the downward screen gravity times time squared. The product then samples that equation over a four-second window at 0.02 game-second intervals and tests each adjacent trajectory segment against the target circle using the combined target and projectile radii. Because the equations, the constants, the launcher origin, the target center, the target radius, and the sampling window are all fixed game parameters, the same pull produces the same path on every visit and on every Restart. This is the practical reason a launch that lands after a Restart will land again, and the practical reason a launch that misses will miss in the same way unless you change the pull. The numbers are deliberately game values, not Earth gravity or a real elastic band; the trajectory is recreational aiming practice, not a ballistics calculator.
When the run locks and why Restart becomes mandatory
A failed launch is normalized to a five-pixel pull signature, which is a coarse fingerprint of where you released. Repeating the same normalized signature does not consume another distinct mistake, because it provides no new attempt pattern; if you have already tried that pull, the game already knows it does not work. A second different failed signature locks the current run and asks you to Restart, so two genuinely different misses are the game's signal that this sequence of pulls is not progressing toward a hit. Successful hits clear the level's failure signatures before the next target appears, so each new level starts with a fresh slate of allowed misses. Completed and deadlocked states freeze launch logic, which is why arrow keys and Enter stop firing while Restart is waiting. Restart returns the game to the exact initial state of the current level, so the launcher origin, the target center, the pull range, and the score are all exactly where they were when the level began. Invalid, non-finite, too-short, or overlong pulls also leave the state unchanged, so a stray release at the edge of the range will not silently end your run.
Related reading: Stop the Timer Game: Five Visible Targets, 1,000 Points.