Inverse

How to play

Inverse tells you to do one thing, and you score by doing the reverse. If it says tap RED, tap the other color. If it says swipe LEFT, swipe right. If it says tap TOP, hit the bottom button. You have three lives, and a wrong answer or a timeout burns one. Every correct answer also trims a little off the clock for the next round.

Tips

• Read each instruction as a command for your opponent. Whatever it says, your job is the other option.
• Color rounds only ever show two buttons, so the answer is always the one the instruction did not name.
• On a keyboard, the arrow keys handle swipe rounds and are much faster than dragging a mouse.
• The timer starts at 2.5 seconds and shrinks toward 1 second, so drill the reversal habit early while time is cheap.

The cost of doing the opposite

Inverse is built on a well studied effect: it takes measurably longer to do the opposite of an instruction than to follow it. The instruction arrives, your brain prepares the matching response automatically, and then you have to cancel that and prepare the reverse. That cancellation is the whole game. Reading tap RED and tapping the other colour is easy when you have all day and very hard when the clock is shrinking.

And the clock does shrink. Each round starts with 2.5 seconds, every correct answer trims 50 milliseconds off it, and it never drops below one second, so a long run ends with rounds less than half the length they started at. Three lives means a couple of slips are survivable, and a timeout costs a life exactly like a wrong answer does.

Reversing faster

• Read the instruction as a command to do the reverse, in one step. Do not read it, then flip it; read it flipped.
• The instruction types are few. Colour, direction and position. Learn the reverse of each so it is a lookup, not a calculation.
• Do not look at the options while reading. Reading and looking at the same time is how the automatic response sneaks through.
• A timeout costs a life just like a wrong answer. If you are genuinely unsure late in the clock, a fast guess is worth more than a slow certainty.
• Your third life is not a spare. Play as if you have one.

Common questions

Why does doing the opposite feel slow?

Because your brain prepares the matching response automatically the moment it reads the instruction, and that response has to be cancelled before the reverse can be made. The cancellation is what the game measures.

Does the time limit change?

Yes. It starts at 2.5 seconds and every correct answer shortens it by 50 milliseconds, down to a floor of one second, so a long run gets progressively faster.

What costs a life?

A wrong answer or a timeout. You have three.