Stick Bridge

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Stick Bridge is a free online one-button timing game built on a single decision you make over and over: how long to hold. The stick grows while the button is down and falls the instant you let go. Too short and your walker steps off the end into the gap; too long and the stick overshoots the far platform and they walk off the other side. There is no steering once it falls, no nudging it, and no second look — the whole game is judging a distance you can see against a stick you can only measure by how long you have been holding. The one thing added to the classic is the gold band across the middle of every platform: land the tip on that and the crossing pays double, and bullseyes in a row pay a rising streak on top. That turns "get across" into "get across at a specific spot", which is what makes a wide platform interesting instead of free. It tightens in both directions — platforms narrow, gaps widen — until the margin for error is about two ticks, which is around sixty milliseconds, and nothing holds that. The floors are measured rather than chosen: with platforms bottoming out twelve tenths wide, a bot with a five-tick error crossed six hundred gaps without a single miss and the test gave up before the bot did. Over eighty seeds now, a steady hand crosses sixty to a hundred and ten, an average one the high fifties, a shaky one the forties — and the spread inside one hand is much narrower than the distance between two, so a run ends on your timing rather than on the deal.

How to play Stick Bridge

1. Press Play. Your walker stands on the right-hand edge of a platform, with a gap and another platform ahead.
2. Hold space, or press the lane, and a stick grows upward from the edge you are standing on.
3. Let go and the stick falls flat across the gap. That is the measurement, and it cannot be taken back.
4. If the tip lands on the next platform, the walker crosses. If it falls short, they walk off the end of the stick.
5. If it overshoots the far edge of the platform, they walk off the other side. Too long is as bad as too short.
6. A crossing scores a hundred. Landing the tip on the gold band across the middle pays a hundred more.
7. Bullseyes in a row pay a rising streak bonus on top, up to four hundred extra.
8. One ordinary crossing resets the streak, so a run of perfect drops is worth far more than the same number of scrappy ones.
9. A miss costs a life and puts you back on the same platform with the same gap — a distance you misjudged is a distance you get again.
10. Three lives. Platforms get narrower and gaps get wider as you go, so the margin for error keeps shrinking.

Tips

• Aim at the gold band, not at the platform. The middle is the safest place to land as well as the highest-scoring one, so there is never a reason to aim anywhere else.
• The stick grows at a fixed rate, so your hold is a clock. Counting in your head beats watching the stick once the pace picks up.
• Release early rather than late. A stick that is slightly short and a stick that is slightly long both drop you, but the short one is easier to feel coming.
• The gap is drawn fresh each platform, so do not build a rhythm on the last one. Look at the distance every time.
• A miss returns the same gap, which makes it the cheapest practice in the game — use the repeat to recalibrate rather than to rush.
• The streak is where the big score is. Four bullseyes in a row are worth more than eight ordinary crossings.
• When the platforms get thin, the bullseye shrinks with them but stays in the middle. The aim never changes, only the tolerance.
• Measured against timing bots, sixty milliseconds of error is the difference between the sixties and the forties. Steadiness beats speed here by a long way.

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