Anyone who has the misfortune to go bowling with me will bear sorry witness to the smack of the ball as it lands from a mid-air throw, rolling at a snail's pace towards the pins, nudging them rather than smashing them apart upon impact.
The only thing older than my elderly style is the sport itself.
10 Pin Shuffle, however, gives this golden game a fresh update complete with intuitive touch controls.
The game has you and a competitor (either computer-controlled or a friend) slide four pucks down to a scoring area at the end of the run. The trick is applying the right force so that each puck lands between in the scoring zones (worth 1, 2 and 3 points respectively), rather than falling short or flying off the edge.
Only one player can score in each round, those that land in the scoring zone not registering unless you have the furthest forward puck on the run. This gives each play-off the potential to be a decider, with huge swings in the total score (targets being the first to 7, 11, 15 or 21) possible from one go to the next.
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It makes play a delicate balance between attack and defence. The desire to rest a puck in the scoring zones offsets against the need to smack straight into your rival's discs, forcing them out of play whilst also rebounding your own into contention.
All of this with just a swipe of your finger - the touch controls determine just where you fire your disc from and the swipe itself the power behind it. This is true for both modes of play: traditional bowling and shuffleboard.
In both cases, there's some serious competition on offer from the game's four opponents in each mode, victory over one unlocking the next, each one that passes gradually raising the bar.
One slight disappointment is that the game doesn't come with any online play. There's multiplayer in the form of peer-to-peer (Bluetooth or wi-fi), but there isn't any direct play against rivals unknown, or even any global league tables - surely a mistake, since the game is seemingly perfect for a ranking system.
As things stand, however, bowling buffs and shuffleboard sharks are sure to be content with what's here, though the lack of additional modes probably limits its playtime by a distance.
For the casual bowler, though, it's effortless to indulge in the simple and swift fun. And boy,
10 Pin Shuffle has no problems whatsoever in hitting a strike on that score.
