HOW TO PLAY

GAME GUIDE & PLAY TIPS

// THE PROTOCOL

The Urinal Protocol is an unwritten social rule that most people instinctively follow in public restrooms: when choosing a urinal, you always pick the one that maximizes the distance from other occupied spots. No talking. No eye contact. Maximum spacing.

Mathematically, this creates a surprisingly deep decision problem — the "optimal" choice changes every time someone new walks in. Urinal Protocol turns that everyday social anxiety into a fast-paced puzzle game.

// OBJECTIVE

Pick the safest empty urinal — the one with the most distance from occupied ones — before time runs out. Score points for correct choices, lose lives for wrong ones. Survive all rounds to clear the stage.

What counts as "safe"?

PERFECT	You picked the optimal slot. Full score + combo.
OK	Close but not the best choice. Partial score, no combo.
OOPS	Suboptimal pick. Lose 1 life.
NO!	You picked right next to someone. Lose 2 lives.
TIMEOUT	Didn't choose in time. Lose 1 life.

// CONTROLS

A / ◀	Move cursor left
D / ▶	Move cursor right
SPACE / ENTER	Select current slot
E	Use held item
ESC	Pause

On mobile: use the on-screen buttons at the bottom of the screen, or tap directly on a slot.

// MODES

EASY	5 rounds · 10 sec per round · 5 lives. Great for learning the rules.
NORMAL	8 rounds · 8 sec per round · 5 lives. The balanced experience.
HARD	10 rounds · 5 sec per round · 3 lives. For sharp reflexes only.
ENDLESS	Infinite rounds that get harder over time. How far can you go?

// ITEMS

Items drop randomly after good choices. You can hold one at a time. Press E to use.

TIME	Adds 3 seconds to the current round timer.
CLEAN	Pushes an occupied urinal out of the row, opening up space.
HINT	Briefly highlights the optimal slot.
HEAL	Recovers 1 lost life.

// SCORING

PERFECT

+100 × combo

+50

OOPS / NO!

−50

TIME BONUS

+speed

Faster choices grant a time bonus on top. Chain PERFECT picks to build your combo multiplier.

// PLAY TIPS

01 Scan the full row first. Don't just grab the nearest empty slot — look at which one has the most breathing room on both sides.
02 Corners are usually safe. An occupied slot in the middle creates two bad neighbors, but end slots only have one side to worry about.
03 Save HINT for HARD mode. Easy and Normal have enough time to figure it out. HARD's 5-second window is where that half-second save pays off.
04 CLEAN is your panic button. When the row is packed and every slot looks equally awful, CLEAN opens a gap. Use it before choosing, not after.
05 Combos multiply fast. Three consecutive PERFECTs triple your points. Prioritize accuracy over speed until you've built a streak.
06 ENDLESS gets tricky around round 15. The row fills up more and time gets shorter. Start using TIME items aggressively once you pass round 12.

// DEV NOTES

This game started as a joke. I read about the urinal problem in a math paper and thought — why hasn't anyone made this into a game? The first prototype was about 60 lines of canvas code and a random slot picker. It was surprisingly fun to "solve."

The hardest part wasn't the optimal-slot algorithm (that's a straightforward max-gap scan) — it was making wrong answers feel wrong without being arbitrary. The judgment tiers (PERFECT / OK / OOPS / NO!) went through about a dozen tuning passes before they felt fair.

The terminal aesthetic came from imagining what a restroom sign looks like in a building that runs on 1990s infrastructure. Monospace, low-contrast, slightly oppressive.