How to play deadband (and why doing less keeps you alive)
deadband is a free precision game you play in the browser. A glowing dot sits in a channel between two walls. A current you cannot see keeps pushing it toward one of them, and you have two thrusters to push back.
That sounds like a game about reacting quickly. It is the opposite. Almost every first run ends the same way: a panicked push, a dot that will not stop, and a wall on the other side.
No download, no account, no app. It runs on a phone on a bad connection, and it keeps working with the network switched off.
The rule, in one sentence
Keep the dot inside the band in the middle of the channel for as long as you can, and never let it touch a wall.
Your score is the time the dot spends inside the band, in seconds, to two decimal places. Time outside the band does not count, but it does not end the run either. Only a wall does that.
How to thrust
- Touch or mouse: hold the left half of the game to thrust left, and the right half to thrust right. A long press works too.
- Keyboard: hold the left or right arrow key.
Holding both sides at once cancels out. The run does not start until your first hold, so take a breath before you press. When it ends, press Enter or the button to run it again.
Why the dot will not stop
Everything in deadband comes from one piece of physics: the dot keeps its momentum.
Holding a thruster does not move the dot at a fixed speed. It adds speed, and that speed fades slowly, losing a little over half of itself every second. Let go after a long push and the dot keeps travelling for well over a second.
So the natural reaction to a drift, a big push the other way, does not stop the dot. It sends it back across the band, past the middle, and toward the other wall. The natural reaction to that is a bigger push back. Within a few seconds you are swinging from wall to wall, and each swing is wider than the last.
That swinging is overcorrecting, and it is the thing the game is built to teach you out of.
The current
The push you are fighting is not random noise. It changes direction slowly, like a current, and it is made of two waves at different speeds, so it never quite repeats in a pattern you can memorise. Left alone, it walks the dot into a wall in one to three seconds.
That means you cannot simply leave it. You have to correct, constantly, but by as little as possible.
Stages: the band narrows and the push grows
Every 12 seconds of time inside the band completes a stage. Time spent outside it does not count toward the next stage, so struggling never earns you a harder one.
At each new stage:
- the band gets narrower, until it bottoms out at a fifth of the channel’s width;
- the current gets stronger, shown in the corner as drift 1.2x, 1.4x and so on.
The run tape fills with one chip per stage you complete, and ends with an X at the wall.
Strategy
Tap, do not hold. Short taps add a little speed that you can take back. Long holds add speed you will spend the next three seconds fighting.
Correct early and small. Watch which way the dot is drifting, not where it is. A dot in the middle moving fast toward a wall is in more danger than a dot near the edge of the band that has almost stopped.
Let it come back on its own. When you have pushed and the dot is heading back toward the middle, stop. The momentum you already gave it will carry it. Adding more is how the swing starts.
Do not chase the exact centre. Anywhere inside the band scores the same. A dot drifting gently around inside the band is a perfect run.
When you are swinging, damp it. If you are already going wall to wall, make each push smaller than the last until the dot settles. Matching the size of the last push keeps the swing going forever.
The three levels
Only the opening width of the band changes between levels. The narrowing, the floor and the current are the same on all three.
- wide - a forgiving band that starts at nearly the whole channel.
- narrow - the real game, and the default. The band starts at about seventy percent of the channel.
- hairline - it starts at under half the channel and reaches its narrowest after only three stages.
Your result
The result screen shows your time in the band, a rank from overcorrector (under 10 seconds) through twitchy, technician, operator and steady hand to absolute zero (90 seconds or more), the stage you reached, your longest unbroken stretch inside the band, and how many corrections you made. A push only counts as a new correction if it starts more than about a fifth of a second after the last one ended, so feathering one push does not inflate it.
Press share this run to share or copy a short summary with your time, your stages as coloured squares and your correction count.
Frequently asked
How do you play deadband? Hold the left or right side of the game, or the left and right arrow keys, to push a drifting dot back toward the middle. Keep it inside the band for as long as you can. Time inside the band is your score, and touching a wall ends the run.
What does deadband test? Restraint. It measures whether you can control something with momentum without overcorrecting. The dot keeps moving long after you let go, so big panicked pushes send it swinging from wall to wall. The skill is doing less.
Is deadband free? Yes. Free forever. No account. Ads never interrupt a round.
Can I play deadband with friends? Not directly, as deadband is a single-player game with no multiplayer mode. You can press share this run after a run to send your time, stages and correction count to a friend and see if they can beat it.
Is there a daily challenge? No. deadband has no daily mode. Every run uses the same rules, and your personal best is the number to beat.
Does deadband work on mobile, and do I need an account? Yes, it works on phones and tablets: hold the left or right half of the game with your thumbs, and a long press works as a hold. No account is needed, and your best time and best stage are saved on your device.
Why does the dot keep moving after I let go? Because it keeps its momentum, losing only a little over half its speed each second. That is deliberate and it is the whole game. Push briefly, then let the speed you added carry the dot back.
Why did the score stop counting? The dot left the band. Only time inside the band counts toward your score and toward the next stage. The run itself continues until the dot touches a wall.
Where deadband sits
deadband is the portfolio’s game about not overcorrecting. Its siblings test other kinds of nerve. graze is about how close you dare let a shot pass; updraft is about how little input it takes to stay steady; tint is about the cost of correction; outbound is about reading the order of things under a clock; wreck is about pushing forward under fire; filter is about asking better questions; overload is about spending a limited hand; closure is about which move you are forced to make next; and bridge is about blocking and winning with the same move.
Every one of them is free and runs in a browser.