Let's Pool: 8 Ball Billiards

The Trick Shot Challenge runs through November 15: 18 trick shots, 54 stars. Plus 13 lessons and an 18-night career. No ads, no coins, nothing that buys a better shot.

Pool the way it should be: you win by playing better.

Every ball rolls, slides and spins according to real physics. The cloth slows it down, the cushion gives back, and side spin does what side spin does. The computer gets no other rules and no better cue: it shoots with a direction and a power, and how strong it is comes down to how cleanly it shoots.

WHAT YOU CAN PLAY

• Career: eighteen nights from Rookie to Legend. A different opponent every night, each a little stronger than the last. The table grows from six to nine feet, from night ten you call your pocket, and the aim help fades step by step.
• Quick match against the computer, at any night of the same ladder.
• Against someone else: on one screen, with two devices in the same room, or through Game Center against anyone, with a thirty-second shot clock.
• Trick Shot Club: eighteen challenges in five levels, up to three stars each (54 in all), from cuts and banks to spin shots that put two balls in two pockets.
• Academy: thirteen lessons in what a ball actually does (stop, draw, follow, side spin), with a hint on the cue ball.
• Practice: the table is yours until the black goes down, with your own aim help and table size, and calling pockets if you like.

THE RULES ARE YOURS Eight house rules to agree on: who breaks, when the groups are decided, what happens when the black drops on the break, whether you call your pocket, where the black may go, what a potted cue ball costs, whether three fouls in a row lose the game, and whether something has to reach a cushion after contact. You can look them up mid-game with one button, because an agreement nobody remembers is not an agreement.

WHAT IS FOR SALE Looks. Twenty-one cues, twelve cloths, eight rails. None of them touch the physics: no cue strikes harder, no cloth rolls faster, no rail changes a cushion. Buy everything and you play exactly the same game as someone who buys nothing. Eight pieces are yours from the start, nineteen you earn on the ladder, and fourteen are a one-time purchase.

WHAT IS NOT IN IT No ads. No energy or waiting timers. No coins, no crates, no subscription. No account, no server of ours and no tracking: your career, your settings and your purchases stay on this device. When you look for someone nearby, people nearby see your name. When you play someone, they also get your level and cue, how you aim and shoot, the rules you agree on, and the fixed reactions you tap. Through Game Center that goes via Apple.

The whole game, lessons and challenges included, is in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and Italian.