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Darts

by Eric March on November 29, 2008 at 7:26 pm

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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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App Name:	Darts
Developer:	Brian Hammond	Version:	1.3
Publisher:	Brian Hammond	Size:	3.8 MB
Category:	Sports Games

I don’t know what it is, but there are some pretty damn good freebies on the App Store lately. Some of them are only free for a limited time, sure, but stuff like this here, which gives no indication of going pay, are very impressive.

Brian Hammond has taken the classic pub game and brought it to the iPhone in a rather stunning virtual format. Two variants of darts are included here: X01 (301, 501, 601, 701, 1001) and Cricket, with Baseball and Killers coming soon. The game features inline help giving you the rules of the variants and some help on the interface, plus a few in-game options, such as setting which variant of X01 you want to play, and whether you want to play straight-in/straight-out, double-in/double-out, or straight-in/double-out. Additional settings are available in the outboard settings app (and y’all know I hate that) to set dart colour, toggle sound effects, and vibration on bull’s eyes, and toggle slow transitions and turn notices. Fortunately Brian was smart in that he put all the set-and-forget options in the settings app, but it would still have been nice to include those in the game itself.

One of the other options you can set in the settings app is throw method. By default, aim-and-flick is set, which lets you position an aiming reticle over the dart board to indicate the score you’re aiming for. If you want a greater challenge or a bit more realism, you can set it to straight flick mode, which eliminates the aiming reticle and requires you to flick both to aim and shoot — which is a lot harder than it sounds. It works very well though and is very intuitive.

The game is done in OpenGL-ES and features some beautifully rendered graphics that lend a great deal of realism to the experience. The sound effects are sparse but effective and well done. Competition against the AI, which can be set to one of three skill levels, is fun and well executed.

Overall, Darts is an absolutely brilliant game and certainly among the very top freebies to come out in the App Store. Very well done indeed, and five stars well earned! Check out the video tour below if you’re still not convinced.