Subpar Pool Review Mini – Review Mini
Mini-golf blends with billiards for your new mobile obsession.
A good mobile game can be hard to find, which made my past discovery of Holedown a pleasant revelation. This snazzy twist on Breakout and Peggle initially came out in 2018 on mobile (with a Switch release later). If you haven’t played Holedown, it’s worth checking out on your phone or your Switch. My affinity for Holedown was rekindled because developer grapefrukt games just released Subpar Pool – a spiritual followup to their previous work. Combining elements of billiards and golf, this excellent slice of arcade brilliance continually iterates into more absurdity and complexity.
It starts off relatively simple. Shoot your cue ball into other balls, hurtling them into pockets within a certain number of shots. Complete a few boards and you’ll complete a run. As you play, you unlock more themes and modifiers. The themes change the type of board you’re on entirely, including ones with teleporting walls and rotating conveyor belts. The modifiers make the game more ridiculous and/or difficult. “Fixed start” doesn’t let you place your cue ball at the start of a level, while the simply named “more balls” fills the board with more balls. On top of all this, you also unlock different ball types. You’ve got big ol’ Chonkers that are harder to move and you also have delicate Crystals that can shatter after they’re hit too much.
Unlocking all this variety happens as you complete different challenges that ask you to execute certain goals. Some are as simple as completing a run on a theme, while others ask you to bounce a ball into another ball and then into a pocket, or go back and forth through a teleporting wall multiple times. It just keeps going, always giving you some new twist that demands you tweak your strategy and play a different style.
All of this allows every run to feel wildly different so Subpar Pool stays fresh over time, making it an ideal mobile game. On Switch, it’s still super fun, but it truthfully isn’t the ideal system for this game. I, for one, am now playing it on my phone after playing it on Switch. Not to say it’s a bad experience on Switch, just that Subpar Pool is best made for cranking out a round or two on your phone as opposed to sitting down and spending hours at your TV. Subpar Pool absolutely rocks no matter where you play it, though.
