General Tips

See also Basic Techniques for scoring tips and general strategy.

Turn off the distractions and resource hoggers

To prevent any gameplay lag, try to close as many browser windows/tabs as possible, as well as any other programs in the background. If not handled, can significantly slow down or freeze the game, sometimes at inconvenient times.

Fast play (mojo harvesting)

If you’re playing games to harvest mojo, your best bet is to not use powerups (except for powers that cost zero mojo during happy hour) and go for curve clears. Since you’re clearing as many balls as possible, gaps are not important. Combos can actually be harmful if they don’t clear a curve as they decrease the speed of balls. If you’re fast, you can expect around 800-1125 mojo per game at level 50+, and more with the 3x potion. Combine with a 24h life for best results.

Fast play (xp harvesting)

If you're the one that goes for XP only but don't have life to worry about, then the quickest way is to get a 24h life and 2x xp potion, and clear at 50 balls in order to get 400 XP from the get go, and deliberatly lose. You should be able to get 400 xp per 20 seconds or so, leveling up much quicker than 1.5 minute games of around 750 xp. If 50 balls give 400 EXP, it takes 4x as many balls cleared to get that to 600, and 12x as many to get 800.

Graph comparision between balls cleared and Mojo/XP:

Slow play (strategical analysis)

It can also be helpful to play slowly at the beginning of the game, form a strategy, and then go for it. Your gaps made at the beginning of a game doesn’t matter much compared to late game, so you have plenty of time to form a strategy. Additionally you can also determine how the balls will react on a board and rethink your strategy appropriately.


The biggest ‘gotcha’ with the Splish Splash board is that your match may impact the other ball behind it. This frog got gap shot denied by not planning first.

Know your game plan before starting.

Like many computer and board games, if you don’t have a strategy, you won’t get far. Are you focusing on getting as many gaps as possible while keeping fruit open? Are you going for that risky but very rewarding double gap opportunity? Whatever it is, if you don’t know what you are doing, chances are you won’t get many points. Study the board, go for a strategy and stick to it. Don’t go for gaps at one point then clearing everything in sight shortly after that within a game.

It’s all about Luck

Since time balls and multiplier balls are random (they show up from 4-28 second intervals) as well as the ball rollout, you might need to play a lot of games in order to get the desired results. Don’t give up, you might not have gotten the right combination of balls to get that large scoring opportunity that game, but that might change the next game around. You might find an early multiplier, or a bunch of time balls. Go for that high score!


Blame the RNG for this combination of balls, nowhere to place them.

Record and Replay

The best way to find out why you didn’t earn so many points is to record and replay your video. There are free screen recorders out there. One of my recommendations is Hypercam 2. Watch yourself, and ask: What opportunities were there for gapshots but didn’t take them immediately? Was there anything that could’ve been optimized, such as reducing waits between hitting balls?

An example is the optimization of the Aweful Visage strategy, the strat of using a two-ball double gap instead of a three-ball gap increases the gapshot score by 15-20%, which is enough to push the high score on this board type from 9.3 million to 12.5 million.

Priority on Fruit / Multiplier, then Time

Since multipliers are very effective, it would be wise to go for them first. Only grab time balls if you are about to run out of time, especially with Timelord, where eight seconds makes a huge difference, and can turn into 24 in some games with substantial luck. If you’re building a double gap (explained later), don’t forget to grab those powerups, or you won’t have enough time to use it effectively. Don’t forget to make an attempt to grab multipliers even after they disappear; you can still get the multiplier if you manage to get it within a few seconds after it’s gone. (For time balls, this is not the case.)

Share (small amounts of mojo)

Unless you wish to talk about your current high score (and risk someone beating you up front) it's not advised to share 500ish mojo posts - sending a batch of fortune cookies to people would be worth much more than this. Definitely share any post that rewards idols and life refills (if they do that).

Don’t be afraid to aim in the general direction.

You don’t have to always look directly at the frog to know what colors are on it, nor do you have to look directly at where you’re firing if precision is not important. You can generally use the corner of your eye to do that. If you’re aiming though small gaps (with a small margin of error) you might want look at where you’re aiming.

Don’t be afraid of death

Remember the balls can touch the skull, just make sure they don’t go directly over the mouth or it's game over. In order to make a lot of points, you've got to take risks, and that means sometimes getting balls near the end of the curve for those double gaps. (Trying it on this board, however, is not advised for inexperienced players as it depends on luck since you have less than a split second to know what color the balls coming out are and hitting it.)

You’re still in the game.

If you make a nice double gap or a good move, don’t get too excited. You’re still in the game, and you’ve got to remain focused until the end. It's recommended that you don't mute the sound, but don't put it on full blast either, so you have a silent yet audible notification that the timer is running low. You can safely look up at your score after time is called.

Real life scenario: Shortly after aiming a double gap, I would have to wait two seconds before the purple ball would roll into place for another double. My plan was to fire the blue ball somewhere else and hopefully get a yellow, which I didn’t. I did get the purple match before the time ran out, though. After viewing the replay, I’ve overlooked a fruit on the bottom left that I could’ve gotten for some more points, since I wasn’t looking directly at it. I moved back up to fifth place but was one double gap shy of moving to 4th :(