Artaban: Carnival Smash

Test your timing and aim in a carnival physics skill game inspired by classic midway attractions. Swing past the bottle, then knock it down on the back-swing. Master 25 hand-built challenges filled with moving obstacles, gates, tricky angles, and increasingly difficult shots — then take on the world in the Weekly Tournament, a fresh run of booths every week with a worldwide leaderboard.

THE BOOTH IS STILL LIT.

Nobody is quite sure who runs it.

Artaban is a classic carnival skill game and physics puzzle. Hitting the bottle is easy. Knocking it down on the way back is the game.

Pull the ball back, let it go, and watch it swing out over the boards. The first swing takes the ball toward the bottle. The back-swing brings it home again. A strike on the return swing is the only one the booth will pay for. Anything else is noise and a wasted go.

TWENTY-FIVE CHALLENGES

Twenty-five challenges, each its own small problem.

Posts that duck out of the way. Doors that open and shut on their own time. A turntable that carries the bottle in a slow circle and will not wait for you.

The physics never change. What changes is everything standing between you and one honest swing.

Learn the angles. Judge the timing. Find the shot that sends the ball out and brings it back where you need it.

YOUR TICKET BOOK

Every challenge has a ticket, and every ticket takes four punches.

One for winning.

Two for winning in three swings or less.

Three for taking it down in a single swing.

And the fourth only if you can do it twice, because once is luck.

A hundred punches in the book, if you are very good and very patient.

THE PRIZE WALL

Fifteen prizes hang at the front of the booth, from a paper pinwheel to a large plush unicorn nobody has ever taken home.

They come off the wall as your book fills.

Pick the one you are playing for and it hangs over the board while you throw.

THE WEEKLY TOURNAMENT

Once a week the booth sets out a run nobody has thrown at before.

New booths every week, generated fresh and the same for every player in the world. Clear as many as you can. Three misses and the run is over — though the Barker has been known to forgive one for a reel.

Your best run of the week goes on a worldwide board against real players, ranked by the house and reset weekly. No account, no sign-in. The game hands you a carnival name.

MADE BY HAND

Every line in this game is drawn in code.

No photographs. No stock art. No downloaded assets.

Four inks on paper, and all of it computed.

Every sound is synthesised too: the clockwork behind the counter, the glass falling over, an organ on somebody else's ride two rows away.

PLAY OFFLINE, OR TAKE ON THE WORLD

The 25 challenges need no account, no sign-in, and no connection. Your progress stays on your phone.

The Weekly Tournament is the one thing that talks to the outside world: it posts your run to the leaderboard, under the carnival name the game gave you, and nothing else.

Free to play, with the occasional advertisement between challenges — never during a throw, never over a result.

One purchase removes them for good.

Step up to the booth. Take your shot. Knock down the bottle on the way back.

Recent changes:
Booth 1 no longer costs you anything. Miss it as often as you like — the run only starts counting misses from booth 2, so nobody is turned out before they have had a fair go. The booth also says the rule out loud now: knock the bottle down ON THE BACK SWING. And if a run ends with nothing scored, the Barker offers to show you the sixty-second tutorial.