One of my favorite games to play at the arcade is that of skee-ball. Not only do I love playing it, but my kid loves playing it as well. There’s just something about rolling a small ball and launching it off a ramp to see how many points you can get. It’s mesmerizing. Well now you can enjoy that same feeling, but in the palm of your hands with Skee-Ball Arcade. It features the traditional skee-ball you’ve come to love, but with some very interesting twists.

You see, Skee-Ball Arcade isn’t about playing by yourself. The game is about playing with friends and competing against them to see who can get the higher score. That means you’ll need to connect the app to your Facebook account. If you don’t have one, you can also register with an email account. From there, you’ll be able to play matches again either friends who might be on the game as well as total strangers it puts you up against. There is no way to play by yourself so you’ll have to start a match with someone. You can also enter these daily and weekly tournaments they have. Those you don’t really need to match up with anyone as your competing with the entire community.

Gameplay wise, it’s mainly all swiping the screen upwards. How fast and hard your swipe will determine the speed of the ball and how high it’ll go. The direction your swipe affects which direction the ball will go as well as how you tilt your device. Unlike traditional skee-ball, there are multiplier bonuses on some cups, bonuses on which lane you use, as well as powerups you can activate while playing to increase your score. It makes for a rather interesting take on skeep-ball and one that actually requires some strategy for scoring.

Art wise, the graphics are very good with very realistic tables and features a good variety of them as well. It’s a very pretty game to look at and makes it that much more fun to play. Audio in the game is also very good as well.

Overall, Skee-Ball Arcade is very fun, as long as you don’t mind playing with others or linking it to Facebook. It’s a really interesting take on skee-ball with all the powerups and multipliers and makes this game very exciting. The game is free, though there are in-app purchases for things removing ads, extra balls, powerups, and even extra tables. You don’t need to buy anything though to enjoy the game.

App Store Link: Skee-Ball Arcade
Version: 1.3
Developer: Scopely
Price: Free
In-App Purchases: Yes
Compatible Devices: (Universal App) Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.