Air Slam

Setup

Air hockey, two players, one at each end of the table. Each has a mallet; there is one puck, and a slot cut through the rail at each end to put it through.

The surface is perforated and blows air upward, so the puck floats rather than slides. That is the whole character of the game: it barely slows down, and it comes back off the rails with almost all the speed it arrived with.

How to play

Drag anywhere on your own half and your mallet goes there — in BOTH directions, not just side to side. You never touch the mallet itself, so your hand never covers the puck you are watching.

Your mallet may sit on the halfway line but may not cross it. Everything on your side of that line is yours to defend and to strike from.

How hard the puck leaves is exactly how fast your mallet was moving when it met it. There is no shoot button and no power meter: flick to strike, glide alongside to cushion, hold still and you are a wall.

There are no turns. The puck is live for the whole match and both players are playing at the same time.

Controls

Put a finger anywhere on your own half and your mallet goes to it, then follows it. You are not dragging the mallet itself, which is the point: your hand never has to sit on top of the puck you are trying to watch.

There is no shoot button, no power meter and no aim line. The speed the puck leaves at is the speed your mallet was moving when it met it, so a flick strikes, a glide alongside cushions, and holding still makes you a wall.

Your mallet stops at the halfway line and cannot cross it, but it can sit exactly on it — so the puck at the line is contested rather than automatically conceded.

The mallet moves in both directions at once and its top speed is the same on a diagonal as it is straight, so cutting across the corner of your half is not a shortcut.

The rail shows both scores and the time remaining. There are no turns and nothing to confirm: the puck is live from the first second to the last.

The table does not mirror in Arabic. Both players' coordinates come from one simulation, so a mirrored table would send every shot at the wrong half while looking perfectly correct.

Scoring

Put the puck through the slot at the far end and you score. There is no keeper — the only thing between the puck and the goal is where you left your mallet.

After each goal the puck is put back in play toward the player who was scored ON, which is the rule at a real table and stops a run of goals compounding.

If the puck ever stalls somewhere the geometry keeps a mallet out, the table serves it back into play rather than letting the clock run down on a still board.

On your profile a win pays 18 points, a draw 6 and a loss 3.

Air Slam is an arcade game, so it pays points, stats and achievements but does NOT move your rating. That ladder is for the turn-based boards: a three-minute reflex match and a game of chess feeding one number would stop it meaning anything.

Practice games against the bot and games on one phone score nothing at all.

Winning

First to seven goals wins. If neither player reaches seven inside three minutes, the player ahead takes it, and a level score is a draw.

The match is three minutes long and there is no stoppage: the clock in the rail is the whole of it.

Losing your connection does not lose you the match. The score is held on our servers and survives a reconnection, a crash or a redeploy — what you lose is the rally that was in the air at the time, and the puck is put back into play.

Tips

Meet the puck, do not chase it. A mallet already moving when the puck arrives hits far harder than one starting from rest — and defending and shooting are the same motion.

Play the angles. With rails this lively a bank shot off the side arrives faster than a straight one, and from a direction the other mallet is not covering.

Do not park on your own goal line. A mallet held back there can only ever block, and blocking returns the puck to the player who hit it.

Watch the halfway line. The player who takes the puck at the line takes the next three seconds of the game with it.