Voltorb Flip is the minigame from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver: a 5×5 grid of face-down cards, each hiding a 1, 2, 3 or a Voltorb. The hints at the end of every row and column tell you the sum of the numbers and how many Voltorbs are hiding there. Flip every 2 and 3 and you clear the level and move up one. Flip a Voltorb and you lose the round’s coins. The part nobody tells you: if the round ends with fewer cards flipped than your level number, whether by Voltorb or by quitting, you drop to the level equal to the number of cards you flipped. Lose on your third card at level 7 and you are back at level 3. The tool knows this, so its advice weighs the level you would fall to.
Drop in a screenshot of the game and the hints fill themselves in (I keep the screenshots to check the reader against real captures; no OCR: the game uses one pixel font, so each digit is matched against a tiny template). Or type them (white is the sum, orange the Voltorb count). The solver then enumerates every board that fits. Each card shows how often it is a Voltorb. The highlighted card is the best flip. Click a card to record what it showed (each click cycles 1, 2, 3, Voltorb, blank), and it recomputes. When the odds turn against you, it will tell you to quit.
One thing to be clear about: this is a game of chance, and the tool does not change that. It tells you the odds exactly, and it tells you which bet is the best one, but a card with a 1% Voltorb chance still blows up one time in a hundred. “Play on” means the expected value favours it, not that it is safe. The only cards that are safe are the ones it marks silver or gold, or shows at 0%.
What to upload
As long as the game is somewhere in your screenshot, the tool will find it. Take the screenshot, drop it in above, done. Boards like these:
Flipped cards are read too, so you can upload again mid-round instead of marking cards by hand. If a screenshot doesn’t work, email it to hello@vandevliet.me and I’ll see what went wrong.
Pokémon, Voltorb and Voltorb Flip are trademarks of Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and GAME FREAK inc., © The Pokémon Company. A small fan project: no affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship, and it earns nothing. Cover and Voltorb mark used for identification only; the icon comes from TheArtificial’s pokemon-icons.
