Flipper Dunk is a sports game that features basketball and pinball elements. The game displays a playfield that mimics the top-down outline of a classic pinball machine. Yet, the framework is vertical and displays a red basketball hoop and a white net suspended at the center of a gray background. Two dark gray flippers with white outlines are below the basket. The player tries to achieve the highest score possible by dunking dropped basketballs into the hoop using only the flippers to guide each shot.
The player receives one life. If a ball drops below the paddles, they must restart the game. If they are successful with the first dunk, the game repositions the hoop and net to make play more difficult.
Flipper Dunk sounds like an easy game, but it's incredibly hard for multiple reasons. It requires the player to tap the screen before starting. On a desktop or laptop computer, the switch from tapping the screen with a mouse or trackpad to using keyboard keys can cause the loss of a few vital seconds needed to flip a flipper at precisely the right moment. If the player is using a trackpad or touchscreen, they need to remember to move the cursor to an exact position over the flipper they want to flip. If they don't remember this requirement, they might flip the wrong one or neither flipper. Lastly, a flipper sometimes becomes stuck in the up position.
