Flick this! Croke puts Crokinole on the iPhone

Crokinole is a beautiful, simple game with a long history. In the tradition of pool and Carrom, Crokinole is a dexterity game that pits two (or four) people against each other around a circular wooden board. Players try to flick little wooden discs towards the center, knocking out opponent's discs if they're in the target area. It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to get frustrated at because you're just not good enough.

The trouble is, if you want a decent Crokinole board at home, it'll set you back a few hundred dollars; $130 or so is the minimum, and you can always pay more if you really want to go all out. It's not hard to find boards costing $400 or more (don't ask how much the Death Star board costs) and you need someplace to store it when it's not in use. These things are about a meter across, and made of heavy wood, so this isn't a trivial issue.

With the Croke iPhone app, you can have a somewhat similar experience on a touchscreen. It's not the same thing, but it's also only $1.99, so you're getting to play without paying through the nose. Read on to see if this flick's for you.

The Game

The rules are simple. Each turn, you flick one disc from your side of the board into the center. If there aren't any of an opponent's discs there, you can aim for the center hole (you get 20 points if you get a bullseye). You need to at least get your shot into the center circle, otherwise it's removed from play. If there are already discs in the play, then you have to hit an opposing disc. If you miss, it's like your shot doesn't even count and your disc is taken off the board. If you at least touch one, though, your disc gets to stay in play and, potentially, score points at the end of the round.

Scoring works a little like Skeeball, with the higher points being available in the middle. Aside from the bullseye, you can score 15 points in the center circle and then 10 and 5 in the areas farther away. Like in pool, there are many ways to play, both on a table top and on your iPhone.

The App

For example, you can choose to play a game of Crokinole to a set number of points (between 5 and 200) or a number of rounds (1-10). This only begins to describe the options in the app. You can set a shot clock (between 5 and 30 seconds, or none at all) and decide how many discs/shots make up a round (1-12). There are also two different ways to shoot a disc: spring shot (my fave) or stroke shot.

Spring shot gives you the best control. You first place the disc where you want it, then pull back on a little glowing blue ball. The harder you pull, the more the power meter glows (red is almost never a good idea, unless you really need to hit an opponent's disc hard and have excellent aim). Let go, and the disc flies across the surface, acting exactly as it would in real life. Stroke shot, on the other hand, let's you actually flick your finger across the screen and when you "hit" the disc, it moves. It's pretty slick, but i found it less precise. You can switch back and forth during a game, so you can have your favorite style available with any shot.

Speaking of options, they're quite nice, but some are a little weird, too. Why is there an option to change the number of points in a game to anything that isn't a factor of five? The finicky slider will lets you select, say, 106 points, but it should really just jump from 105 to 110 since there's no way to score single points in the game.

The AI opponent has three different challenge levels. On the hard setting, it is really good, almost like it is using an algorithm to calculate the physics of each shot. Hmmm. Watching it score bullseye after bullseye does get a bit boring after a while, but the weaker AI levels aren't that much of a challenge after the first dozen plays, so you have to get better if you don't want to get spanked all the time.

The game is designed for the iPhone/iPad touch, but it works well and scales nicely to the iPad, giving a better view of the digital wood grain. Still, the whole thing really needs to be recoded as a universal app, so you can see the whole board at one time. An iPad version would also make two-player less of a screen-flipping nightmare. Granted, you can turn off the camera movement if you're playing across the table, but I still want an iPad version of this app.

One appealing option is the online multiplayer, but this isn't as good as it could be. Why? Lack of players. i tried many times to find online opponents, but could never find any. Is there anyone out there? Still, more connections and ways to play Crokinole are excellent in our book. Interested? Why not look into the free one-player lite version?