How to play

Thumbprint School works in any modern browser. Open the site, choose how you want to be known, and press a tile. This page explains the few things worth knowing before you start.

Guests and accounts

Most people play as an anonymous guest. A guest needs no name, no email and no password: the site remembers your best scores in this browser and nothing else. If you clear your browser's data, the scores go with it.

An account is optional. It keeps your scores across devices and lets you join the leaderboards under a name. You can sign in with Google or with a passkey, or make a username. Accounts for adults can also unlock the games on the Mature shelf, which stay hidden from guests and from younger players.

The shelves

The arcade is one long shelf of clay tiles. Each tile is a tiny moving preview of its game; a badge in the corner shows the rating. Press a tile and the clay takes your thumbprint, then the game opens full screen. The categories (Classic, Puzzle, Platformer, Sports, Typing, 3D) are only a guide; every game is short enough to try on a lunch break.

Two games need WebGL, the 3D graphics that most browsers have and some office computers switch off. Their tiles say so. Everything else runs on a plain canvas and works through corporate proxies and on old laptops.

Controls

Every game can be played with a keyboard, a gamepad or touch. The rule of thumb:

• Arrow keys or WASD move; Space (or Z) jumps, launches or boosts; Enter confirms.
• On a phone, swipe or tap where the game shows a hint; a stick and buttons appear when a game needs them.
• The typing games want a real keyboard. On a phone, tap the page to bring the keyboard up.
• Esc pauses most games. M mutes.

Each game's own page under Games lists its exact controls.

Graphics levels

The 3D games pick a graphics level by measuring your machine during the first seconds, then let you change it in the menu: Low keeps frame rates up on built-in graphics, High turns the shadows and the clay detail on. The 2D games are light enough that they do not ask.

Scores and leaderboards

A run ends with a score card. Your best run is kept locally for guests and on the server for accounts, and the leaderboard shows the top runs under their players' names. Scores are checked against what a game can plausibly produce in the time played, so there is no point sending the site a made-up number.

Clay Mail

Some games have a terminal, an old computer somewhere in the level, where you can leave a short message for a friend. A message is protected by a PIN you choose, lives for 48 hours, and can only be read at a terminal inside a game. Nothing written there is ever public. The text is checked against a word list before it is accepted, and there is no way to browse other people's messages.

When something goes wrong

If a game shows a black screen, try the Low graphics level, or another browser. If a sound is missing, click or tap once: browsers only start sound after a gesture. Anything else, send a note to privacy@thumbprint.school with the game's name and your browser.