What is Air Hockey?
This is air hockey for the devices you already have. Lay them flat with their edges touching, and the rink runs across all of them: the puck leaves one screen and enters the next exactly where the edges meet, at the same speed and on the same line.
Every player is a mallet and a goal at the edge they sit at. With one player on each device, that device is their end of the rink; two people can share a device, each defending a goal at their own edge.
How a match goes
Before the first serve everyone grabs their mallet, then a 3-2-1 countdown drops the puck. Hit it hard and it shoots across the seam; bank it off the rails to sneak it past.
Two players duel, on two phones or one: the first to 5, 7 or 11 goals wins, picked before the match. Comeback goals, on unless you turn them off, narrow the goal mouth of whoever is behind, so no lead is safe.
Three or more play free-for-all, as in 3 player air hockey, and four can also split into two teams of two. In free-for-all everyone starts with five lives, every goal you let in costs one, and a player with none left is walled off. The last one standing wins.
What you need
Phones, tablets or a mix, iPhone and Android together. The rink follows how they lie: held upright you get a long rink, sideways a wide one.
A phone beside a tablet works too. The puck crosses through an opening where the two screens meet and bounces off the rest of the rail.
One device is enough for two: the rink runs along the screen, one player at each short end, or you and a bot.
Modes
- Classic
- The plain table: speed and angles.
- Bumpers
- Brass posts to bank shots off.
- Ice
- Barely any friction and lively rails.
- Heavy
- A steel puck. Wind up to shoot.
- Mines
- Touch a mine and the puck blasts off.
Why it's fun at a table
It's air hockey without the table. The phones in your pockets become a rink in seconds, on a kitchen table, in a café or on the floor.
The seam is the best part: your shot leaves your screen and lands on your friend's a moment later, right in front of them. Rallies get loud fast, and with four it's one of the party games on phones.
Air Hockey: questions and answers
Can two phones make one air hockey table?
Yes, push them together, screens up, and the puck crosses the seam where they meet.
Can two people play on one phone?
Yes, one at each short end of the screen, each grabbing their own mallet.
Can four people play?
Yes, 4 player air hockey runs on four devices, in two teams or free-for-all, and two people can share a device.
Can I play against the computer?
Yes, add a bot: alone it takes the far end of your screen, at a table a seat at the edge of the rink.
Is it free with no app?
Yes, open bigboard.games in the browser on each device; nobody signs up, and starting a table takes four steps.