How to Play SharpShooter

SharpShooter is a free basketball game about one thing: making the shot. You take a single ball to 30 city courts, and each one changes the problem. The rim shrinks. The hoop starts moving. The wind picks up. The backboard disappears. There is no dribbling and nobody guarding you. It is just you, an arc, and a hoop that keeps getting harder to hit.

Controls

Shooting works like a slingshot. Hold anywhere on the court, drag away from the hoop, and let go. Same gesture with a mouse, a trackpad or a thumb, so it plays the same on a laptop or a phone.

• How far you drag sets the power. A short pull is a soft touch. A long pull is a heave. There is a power meter next to the shooter while you drag.
• The angle you drag sets the arc. Pull straight back for a flat shot, or pull down and back to send it high.
• Let go to shoot. While you hold, a faint line previews the start of the flight path.
• Escape or the EXIT button leaves a round early.

The two modes

Scoring and leaderboards

Every mode has a public leaderboard shared by everyone who plays. Finish a round and you see your score, your all time rank, and the players just above and below you. You can set a display name there and share the result.

Both modes score in the same direction, so a bigger number is always better:

• Play Now counts courts cleared.
• Shooting Range counts makes in a row, on a board for each court.

You can open the full top 25 from the button beside each tile on the home screen, or from the leaderboard link on the results page.

Picking a jersey

Before a round you can cycle the shooter through the colours of all 30 clubs. It is cosmetic and has no effect on scoring, but the game remembers your choice between visits.

What changes from court to court

Each court bends the physics in a specific way, and the line under the city name tells you what you are dealing with before you take your first shot.

• How forgiving the rim is. Early hoops help a near miss fall. Later hoops do the opposite. The ball needs a steeper entry angle and it rattles harder off the iron.
• How wide the hoop is. The first court is more than five ball widths across. From the seventh onward you are shooting at roughly a real target, a little under twice the width of the ball.
• Where the hoop sits. Some rims are low, some are high, and some slide side to side or bob up and down while you aim.
• Wind. On windy courts you can see the air moving. The speed and density of the streaks track the actual force on the ball, and it gets re-rolled for every shot, so check it before each attempt rather than once per court.
• Gravity and air. Heavy gravity drags the ball down fast. Thin air lets it float, which sounds like a gift and is not.
• No backboard. On several courts the backboard is gone, so the bank shot is off the table and the ball has to fall clean.

Shooting tips

Use more arc than feels natural

A flat shot arrives at a shallow angle, which makes the opening effectively narrower and turns the front of the rim into a wall. A higher arc drops the ball into a wider target. That is true in a real gym and it is true here, because the later courts literally require a steeper entry before they count a make. If you are rattling shots out on the later courts, raise the arc before you change anything else.

Bank it when you can

Where there is a backboard, a bank shot forgives a lot. The glass turns a small aiming error into a smaller one. Aim for the upper corner of the square rather than the rim itself. Once the backboard is gone that safety net goes with it, so expect your percentage to drop on those courts and plan around it instead of fighting it.

Change one thing at a time

The usual mistake after a miss is adjusting power and angle together, which tells you nothing. If the ball went long, keep the angle and pull back slightly less. If it fell short, add a little power. Only touch the arc when the ball is hitting the front or back of the rim instead of landing past it.

Read the wind on every shot

Wind is re-rolled each attempt, so the correction that just worked can be wrong on the next one. A tailwind carries the ball long and a headwind drops it short. Aim into it a little rather than trying to overpower it.

On the shot clock, commit early

The timed court shoots for you if you hesitate, and the automatic shot is almost always a miss. Start your drag straight away and accept a rough aim. A hurried shot you control beats a random one you do not.

Protect your lives early

Lives are the only currency and you cannot earn them back, so the early courts are not a warm up. They are the budget you will spend on the hard ones. Take the first fifteen slowly. A life you throw away on court three is one you will badly want on court twenty five.

In Shooting Range, pick a court just past your level

Streaks grow fastest on the easy courts, but you learn most on the one that keeps beating you. Because every court has its own board, a long run on a hard court counts for just as much as a long run on an easy one.

The full course

All thirty courts in play order. Play Now runs the whole list from the top. Shooting Range lets you drop into any single one of them.

Courts 1 to 15

Courts 16 to 30

Common questions

Is it free?

Yes. It runs in the browser with no account, no download and nothing to buy.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The drag and release gesture works with touch and the layout adapts to portrait screens.

Are my scores saved?

Leaderboard scores are stored on the server and shown publicly. Your jersey choice, your sound setting and your personal bests are kept in your own browser.

Can I turn the music off?

Yes. The SOUND button under the game mutes the music and the effects, and it remembers the setting next time.