The games

Every game on Thumbprint School is free, runs in the browser, and is made of clay. Most of them run on any computer or phone; two need WebGL for their 3D. Each one has its own page with what it is, how to play it and its controls. The rating in brackets uses the familiar scale: E for everyone, E10 for ages ten and up, T for teens.

• Artillery Hills (3D, Strategy; rated E10; needs WebGL): Two clay tanks face each other across a ridge of rolling hills, cut like a slice of cake so you can see the layered earth inside. One is green, one is rust red, and in the valley behind them a whole war is going on in miniature: two lines of trenches, field guns flashing, puffs of earth thrown up and drifting off on the wind, a lumbering early tank and two biplanes chasing each other round the sky. The two tanks on the hills are what you play; the war behind is the weather.
• Battle Squares (Boardgame, 3D, Strategy; rated E10; needs WebGL): A sea battle on a tabletop. In front of you, a clay sea marked into a hundred squares, ten by ten, and on it your fleet: a carrier with its planes coming and going, a battleship, a cruiser and a destroyer, their turrets turning now and then, radars going round and small inflatable boats running between them. Floating over the far side of the table is a dark glass operations display with the other side's waters ruled on it in glowing lines. Their fleet is out there somewhere, and so far the display is blank.
• Blackjack (Casino, Card; rated T): The casino's first table, laid with green clay felt and dealt from a four-deck shoe by a croupier who never hurries. The chips are play chips: the house gives you a hundred when you are under a hundred, nothing here is money, and nothing here can be bought. Your balance carries across the casino and onto the leaderboard.
• Blob Breaker (Classic; rated E): A clay ball, a clay paddle, and a wall of soft blobs that splat when the ball hits them. Blob Breaker is the ball-and-paddle classic, remade in clay: every hit leaves a dent, every blob goes down with a squash.
• Checkers in the Park (Boardgame, 3D, Strategy; rated E; needs WebGL): A clay checkers board sits on a stone table in a city park, red pieces at your end and black across the board from you, and your opponent sits across it, someone different each game. Around the table the park goes on with its day: people walking their dogs along the paths, two kite flyers on the lawn, the city skyline beyond. The board and the pieces are painted clay, pressed and a little uneven, the way a set made by hand would be.
• Chess in the Park (Boardgame, 3D, Strategy; rated E; needs WebGL): A clay chess set stands on a stone table in a city park: the off-white pieces at your end, the dark ones across the board, and in the seat behind them a player who has clearly been coming to this table for years. Around you the park goes on with its afternoon: people walking their dogs along the paths, two kite flyers on the lawn, the city skyline beyond the trees. The board is painted clay, and the pieces are pressed from plain clay, a little uneven, the way a set made by hand would be.
• Clay Crossing (Classic; rated E): A small clay critter has to cross a five-lane road of clay cars and trucks, then a river of drifting logs and lily pads, to reach the nests at the top. Fill all five nests and the lanes speed up. Clay Crossing is the road-crossing classic, with a twist in the water.
• Clay Hop (Platformer, Classic; rated E): A small clay figure hops from shelf to shelf inside a kiln, and the shelves will not hold still. Clay Hop is a one-button platformer: the only way is up, and the glaze pooling underneath is the Kiln's own heat.
• Clayju Runes (Typing, 3D; rated T; needs WebGL): A giant made of half-fired clay is walking out of the sea toward the city of Port Calder, and the only thing that slows it is the old runes, which someone has to type while a helicopter flies you round its head. Clayju Runes is a typing game in full 3D.
• CLUTCH! (Typing; rated E10): Ozzie Park passed his driving test this morning, on the second try, and he has joined the high school driving club. His oldest friend Natalie is in it. So is her boyfriend. CLUTCH! is a story told in over-the-top animated clay storyboards, and every line of it is typed.
• Coast Road (Classic, Sports; rated E): A clay car with the throttle wide open, a winding road drawn the old arcade way, and a clock that only checkpoints can stop. Coast Road is a driving game in the sprite-scaled pseudo-3D style: the road rises and falls and bends toward the horizon, and it runs in any browser without 3D hardware.
• Craps (Casino; rated T): The long table, seen from the shooter's end, with the layout's boxes pressed in cream clay and a pair of clay dice. The chips are play chips: the house gives you a hundred when you are under a hundred, nothing here is money, and your balance carries across the casino and onto the leaderboard.
• Glaze (Card; rated E): The shedding game, dealt in the clay's four glazes: terracotta, celadon, cobalt and mustard. Each glaze has its numbers from nought to nine and its marks, the skip, the reverse and the draw-two; on top of those come the wilds and the wild draw-fours. Seven cards each for you, Ines, Otto and Pia. Match the glaze in play or the mark on top of the pile, or play a wild and name the glaze. The first hand emptied wins the round.
• Glaze Maze (Classic; rated E): A terracotta clay blob rolls through a kiln-shaped maze eating clay pellets, while the Kiln's fired four hunt it down the corridors. Water drops soften the hunters for a few seconds, and soft clay can be squashed. Glaze Maze is the maze-chase classic, built from our own maze, characters and sounds.
• Go Fish (Card; rated E): A children's Go Fish by a pond on a summer morning. The cards are thirteen clay animals (a cat, a dog, a fox, an owl, a frog, a bear, a bunny, a duck, a pig, a sheep, a turtle, a whale and a bee), and across the mat sit Ines and Otto, two clay players who have done this before. Everyone gets seven cards. On your turn you ask one of them for an animal you already hold; if they have any, they hand over every one and you ask again. If they have none, you go fish: draw from the pond, and if you draw the very animal you asked for, you go again. Four of an animal is a set, laid down on the mat. When all thirteen sets are made, the most sets wins.
• Grandma's Typewriter (Typing, Classic; rated T): One dark hallway, one old typewriter, and a night that only ends when the typing does. Grandma's Typewriter is a typing game told as a story: you are keeping a promise to type through until dawn, and the house has opinions about that.
• Memory (Card, Puzzle; rated E): A children's game of pairs by the pond. The cards are the same thirteen clay animals as Go Fish, dealt face down on a sandy mat in a grid; a pair is the same animal in the same frame (the warm frame or the blue one). Turn two cards; if they match they stay, if they do not they go back down. Clear the grid and the next level deals a bigger one, from twelve cards up to forty-eight.
• Roulette (Casino; rated T): A single-zero wheel pressed from clay, thirty-seven pockets in the real order, and a layout of clay strips on the casino floor. The chips are play chips: the house gives you a hundred when you are under a hundred, nothing here is money, and your balance carries across the casino and onto the leaderboard.
• Rummy (Card, Strategy; rated E): Gin rummy across the card room's table against Otto, who plays a patient game. Ten cards each. On your turn, draw from the stock or take the top of the discard pile, then discard one card. Three or four of a rank is a set; three or more in a row in one suit is a run; everything else in your hand is deadwood, an ace counting one and a court card ten.
• Solitaire (Card; rated E): Klondike, the solitaire everyone knows, dealt from a deck of clay cards onto green baize in the card room. Seven columns, the last card of each face up; a stock to draw from; four foundations to build each suit from the ace to the king. Columns build downward in alternating colours, and a king, or a run headed by one, can take an empty column.
• Squish Match (Puzzle, Relax; rated E): A relaxed match-three puzzle on a tray of clay blobs. Swap two neighbours to line up three of a colour and they squish flat and disappear; the blobs above drop into the gap. You have thirty moves. Make them count.
• Thumb Flap (Classic; rated E): A small lump of terracotta with a thumbprint pressed into it, and a kiln full of shelf posts drifting toward it. One tap or one key press is one flap. The blob rises, then falls, and the posts come in pairs with a gap between them. Thread the gap and you score a point. Touch a post, the ceiling or the blue glaze along the floor and the Kiln has you.