🎱Side Pocket

Controls

This one uses the stick and the big button, nothing else.

How a round goes

A small bar table with nine balls racked in a diamond, and everyone takes turns. On your turn the aim line starts pointed at the nearest ball; nudge the stick to swing it slowly, hold it to swing fast. The game draws where the cue ball will be when the two touch — the ghost ball — the line the object ball will take, and the cue ball's line after. The target pocket rings green when the shot is on and red when the white is about to go down.

Press to start the power meter, which climbs and then bounces; while it runs, push the stick forward for follow or back for draw, and press again to strike. Spin is optional: a plain stun shot is a perfectly good shot. Take too long and it strikes for you.

Pot a ball and you keep the table. Miss, or pot the white, and the next player is up. Each shot one pocket flashes and pays double, and often a bonus star sits on the open cloth, collected by any ball that rolls over it. Clear the table and it is racked again and you keep shooting. Eight shots each with one or two players, six with three or four; when the last shot is taken the round ends.

Scoring and winning

Twenty a ball, forty in the flashing pocket, fifty for the star, a hundred for clearing the rack, minus ten for a scratch. Points land the instant a ball drops. Highest total wins; ties share. Alone, your total goes to the leaderboard, and a banner says TARGET when you pass the table's par.

Tips

• A child who puts the ghost ball on the pocket pots the ball, every time. That is the whole contract.
• The scratch warning is drawn before you shoot. If the pocket is red, change the plan, not the power.
• Nobody inherits a dead table: with fewer than three balls left when the turn passes, the rack is set again.