HALF COURT DUO
The Half Court Duo icon: a bulb lit hoop and a ball arcing up from a glowing pad.

Half Court Duo

Fold it. Flick it. Swish.

An arcade basketball machine that lives in your folded phone. Stand it up like a laptop: the hoop is on the raised half, you flick from the half on the table, and every shot sails up and over the fold.

Designed for iPhone Duo

Coming to the App Store. Free, with ads.

Plays on any iPhone with iOS 27.1 or later. Best folded like a laptop.

A phone folded like a laptop, the arcade cabinet on the raised half and the court on the half below. A ball on fire flies up from the pad, over the fold, toward the hoop, with HEAT and SWISH lit either side of the backboard.

Sixty seconds on the clock

Flick, swish, flick again.

The next ball racks under half a second after the last one leaves your thumb, and up to three can be in the air at once. Flick up from the ball on the pad; a tap does nothing.

  • Two points a basket.

  • Nothing but net is worth one more. A basket that never touches the rim is a swish.

  • The last fifteen seconds. The backboard turns red and every basket thrown then is worth three.

  • Heat. Make three in a row and the ball catches fire: every basket after that is worth one more, until you miss.

  • A hoop that moves. At 20 points it starts to slide; at 40 it moves faster and the backboard tilts.

  • Beat the buzzer. A shot in the air when the buzzer goes still counts.

Four ways to play

All four are on the main menu, and none of them needs an account.

Arcade

Sixty seconds, as many baskets as you can.

Streak

No clock. Miss once and it is over.

Daily Shootout

One hoop for everyone each day. The same moving pattern and the same two bonus windows for every player, and a fresh leaderboard at midnight UTC.

Pass & Play

Two players, one phone, thirty seconds each. Hand it across the table and see who wins.

Every way you hold it

Folded like a laptop is the best seat in the house, and it plays every other way as well.

  • Folded like a laptop. The hoop on the raised half, the court on the half on the table, and the ball crossing the fold on every shot.
  • Open flat. The fold becomes a brass rail across the middle, and every shot flies over it.
  • On its side, like a book. A side view of the same machine, and you throw toward the hoop across the fold. Turning the folded phone between laptop and book never pauses a round.
  • Closed. The whole game on the outside screen, with the brass rail where the fold would be.
  • A phone without a fold. The same rail across the middle of the screen, and the same game.

Open it flat in the middle of a round and the game waits for you to fold it back, or carry on flat with Resume.

The closed phone playing on its outside screen: the cabinet above a brass rail, a ball on fire crossing the rail toward the hoop.
Closed, on the outside screen
An ordinary phone playing the same game, the brass rail drawn across the middle of the screen where a fold would be.
A phone without a fold

A real cabinet, drawn in code

Chasing bulbs, a neon sign, LED scoreboards, a net that swishes and a ball that catches fire. Every light is drawn in code and every sound is synthesized: the clank of the rim, the horn at the buzzer, the crowd when you heat up. Feel the rim and the swish through your fingers too.

No sample packs and no downloaded art: the bulbs, the net, the ball, the lettering on the signs and every sound are made by the game's own code.

Game Center

Leaderboards for Arcade, today's Arcade, Streak and the Daily Shootout, and fifteen achievements. It is optional: no account is needed to play, and Pass & Play is never posted.

  • First BucketMake your first basket.
  • Nothing but NetMake a basket without touching the rim.
  • Heat CheckMake three in a row and set the ball on fire.
  • FirestormMake eight in a row in one round.
  • Half CenturyScore 50 points in one 60 second round.
  • Triple DigitsScore 100 points in one 60 second round.
  • Net BurnerMake five swishes in one 60 second round.
  • Bonus HunterMake five baskets in bonus time in one 60 second round.
  • SharpshooterMake 25 baskets in one 60 second round.
  • Ten StraightMake ten in a row in Streak mode.
  • UnbrokenMake 25 in a row in Streak mode.
  • Shootout DebutFinish a Daily Shootout.
  • Seven Day ShooterFinish the Daily Shootout on seven different days.
  • RegularFinish 25 rounds.
  • Arcade RatFinish 100 rounds.

About the ads, plainly

Half Court Duo is free. A banner sits under the menu and the results, never during a round. A full screen ad can follow a finished round: at most one every third round, at least 90 seconds apart, and none in your first session. At the buzzer of an Arcade or Daily Shootout round you can choose to watch a video for thirty more seconds, once a round; that round counts for your own best but not for the leaderboards.

Remove Ads, one purchase, removes the banner and the between-round ads. It does NOT remove the optional +30 s videos, which stay, and are always your choice. Nothing else is for sale: no coins, no energy, no loot boxes.

What the advertising collects, and every choice you have about it, is in the privacy policy.

What it looks like

Every picture below is the real game, captured from the running app and frozen on one scripted moment. Only the folded phone around each one was added.

  • A clean swish: the ball dropping out of the net, SWISH lit beside the backboard, and the next ball on its way up from the pad.
  • The final fifteen seconds: the backboard red and tilted, BONUS x3 lit across the scoreboard, a ball rising toward the rim.
  • A Daily Shootout bonus window: BONUS on the scoreboard, the backboard lit red, a ball in the air.
  • A Pass and Play winner card: Maya wins with 32 over Jonah's 23, with Play Again, Share and Menu buttons.
  • Arcade results: NEW BEST, a score of 57, 20 of 31 made at 65 percent, with Play Again, Share and Menu.
  • The main menu over the cabinet, the LED sign reading FLICK TO SHOOT, with Play, Daily Shootout, Streak, Pass and Play, Settings and Remove Ads.

Made for anyone who ever fed a basketball machine on a boardwalk. Not a children's app, and not in the Kids category.

Questions? Support has the answers we already know about and the address for the rest.