How does TOPPLE work?

The player lays domino bones into a chain where touching ends must match, then topples it. One pulse runs from head to tail and adds each bone's pips to the score, multiplied by the current charge, and every double on the way doubles the charge. A run is eight rounds, each with a target score, three drops and three discards.

What is the daily run?

Every day all players get the same bones in the same order. Luck is the same for everyone, so the score shows how well the chain was ordered. A practice mode gives a random run instead.

How are scores on the daily board checked?

The game sends the log of moves, and the server plays the same run again from that log. A score is accepted only when the server's total matches the one the browser claimed.

TOPPLE — a domino roguelike in the browser

The brief

TOPPLE is a game Marketing MIX made for itself, so this case is about our own product. It started on 8 August 2026 from a market question: what kind of short, free browser game could be played in ten minutes on a phone, read without words, and give players a number worth sharing.

Card roguelikes are a proven genre, and their weak spot on a phone is text: every card carries a rule written in small type. A domino bone carries its rule in its shape. Almost everyone already knows the only rule (the ends must match), so the game needs no tutorial text and almost no translation. The brief was a deck-builder on dominoes, with a daily run that is the same for everyone.

What we built

Research before code

The first day produced a written product spec, a market study and a design direction, and the core maths was checked by our own simulations before the interface existed. The simulations decided the size of the hand and showed that the order of bones had to matter more than the luck of the draw, which is why the game has boosters at all. A playable prototype was ready the same day.

The rules

The chain grows down the screen with two open ends. A bone goes on either end if the number matches, and an undo is always free. When the player stops, the chain topples: one pulse runs from head to tail, adds each bone's pips to the score, multiplied by the charge, and every double doubles the charge. The whole game is the question of whether one bone can legally sit below another.

A run is eight rounds. Each round has a target, three drops and three discards. Between rounds a shop sells grafts, boosters tied to a pip number from 0 to 6: SPARK, WEIGHT, GREED, ECHO, TITHE and ANCHOR. A graft on sixes behaves differently from the same graft on twos, so a small set of graft types gives a large set of builds.

A daily run with an honest board

On 9 August 2026 the game went online at topple.pages.dev. The same day it got two languages (English and Russian), a mentor for first-time players, a full move log with exact replay, and a daily board. Everyone gets the same bones on the same day. The browser sends the move log with the score, the server replays the run, and a score that does not match is refused. One row per player is kept, the best one. A practice mode gives a random run.

The balance was tuned by a bot that played hundreds of runs, so the first rounds are survivable and the last ones are rare. Runs are saved in the browser and continue after a reload.

Lamplight and drilled digits

The design direction is a table at night under one lamp. The surface is a neutral graphite, the bones are ivory, and the colour comes from the warm pool of light. The signature is the score itself: every number in the game is set in a three-by-five grid of drilled pips on a bone plate, so a screenshot of a score already looks like a domino. The charge has its own six-step colour ladder. Sound is synthesised in code, and the bones and digits are drawn in code as well.

Where it stands today

On 8 November 2026 TOPPLE is live at topple.pages.dev. The first screen shows the target, the charge in drilled digits, the round out of eight, drops and discards, the language switch and the daily run number with the line "everyone gets the same bones today", next to a Practice button. The hand of bones sits at the bottom with the Discard and Topple buttons.

Web builds: corporate websites. Our other browser games: Raccoon Pentathlon, HATCHWIRE, techno dragons and ZARF, an envelope budgeting game.

Project lead: Marketing MIX. Product: TOPPLE, a browser game of our studio. Year: 2026.

TOPPLE: build a domino chain, topple it, chase the daily score

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