Strike Knight for iPhone and iPad

Strike Knight looks to recreate the puck bowling game you might find down at your local tavern. And it does a pretty good job of it, from the gleaming wood of the playing surface to the neon bar lights in the background. This iPhone offering from Backflip Studios--and its iPad counterpart, Strike Knight HD--doesn't exactly push the envelope for iOS gaming. But both versions of Strike Knight offer up a decent degree of fun, if you're either willing to put up with a lot of ads or pay for the privilege of making those ads go away.

Gameplay in Strike Knight couldn't be simpler: Use your finger to slide a puck across a wooden tabletop toward ten pins. At the far end of the table, lit-up numbers flash just above the pins. These are the points you pick up if you record a strike (knocking down all ten pins in one turn) or a spare (knocking them down in two turns); fail to record either, and you're awarded only a meager amount of points for the pins you do manage to knock down.

The game's scoreboard also features the titular Strike Knight, an animated figure who plays air guitar to celebrate your bowling successes and shakes his head sadly to mark your defeats. He also praises your strikes and mocks your misses, though in a gravelly roar that makes it kind of hard to figure out what the Strike Knight is saying. (I think I've heard him say things like "Impressive" when I've picked up the spare and "Come on" when I've missed pins--it's like being taunted by someone in the Witness Protection Program.)

Strike Knight looks to liven up its basic gameplay with achievements that you can unlock with feats of bowling skill--picking up the seven-ten split, for example, or bowling an entire game without any open frames. The game also features a pass-and-play multiplayer mode, in which up to four players can compete to rack up the highest score. You can't challenge opponents over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, alas.

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