It’s driving me dotty

Pure twitch reactions is all Flinch asks of you as you hammer on a black dot that moves and teleports around the screen. It’s a reaction test as much as anything, with your metrics of success being accuracy the length of time between taps.

Quick fingers

For the sake of argument, let’s call Flinch a game. It actually sits somewhere between reaction-test and self-improvement app, but the metrics it adds to compel you to keep coming back certainly feel gamey. But don’t be confused, you won’t really be “playing” much.

A round of Flinch has you track a black dot around a stark white screen. The circle starts in the center of the screen, and a tap will see it jump to another spot. Sometimes the new position will be static on the other side of the screen, other times it may be scrolling, or it may simply flicker a millimeter leaving you to wonder if your phone’s touchscreen is broken – it isn’t though, and Flinch’s exacting and responsive controls ensure that when you do hit the screen the speed of your tap will be precisely recorded.

Nimble digits

The momentary self-doubt you sometimes feel in Flinch is where the real challenge lies, because it these fractions of a moment that you lose valuable milliseconds. Your “score” is based off how quickly you accurately touch the dot – once ten taps have missed their mark the round ends and you are presented with a measure of your speed and hand-eye co-ordination.

Maybe Flinch shouldn’t capture your attention, but something about it does – for a few turns at the very least. It is only when your speed and improvement plateaus that you will tuck this away at the back of your mind to be forgotten. Which is handy, as rebooting the game often leads to it crashing.

Soon forgotten

There is very little to Flinch, and no real long term appeal. That said, for at least a day after you download it, you will find yourself being oddly pulled into its little reaction test.