Smile Ball

Two grinning blobs, one bouncy ball, and a rule that punishes goal-hanging

2 player, one device
arcade
casual
2 player

▶ Play Smile Ball Loads here in the page. No download, no account.

Prefer it full screen? Open Smile Ball on its own.

About Smile Ball

Smile Ball puts two round, grinning creatures on a small walled pitch with a net at each end and a ball that refuses to settle. You get three things to do: slide sideways, jump, and grab. That is the whole control set, and it is enough, because there is no kick button — the ball rebounds off the curve of your body and the angle of contact decides everything.

The grab is what separates this from the usual head-football scramble. Hold the button as you meet the ball and your blob catches it for up to a second, swinging it round as you run. Release and it goes up as a lob whose speed comes from how fast you were swinging. Your opponent can knock it loose by landing on top of you, so carrying is a gamble rather than a free reset.

Matches last two minutes. Play the built-in opponent, which has three strengths, or share the keyboard with somebody else. It suits anyone who wants football with no passing, no formations and no offside — just two faces, a ball, and whoever misreads a bounce first.

What is different about this version

Most head-football games let you park in your own goal mouth and swat everything away. Here that loses you a goal outright: stand in the band directly in front of your own net for a second and a half, a ring fills above your head, and the other side is awarded the goal.

The grab has guard rails too — a one-second carry limit, a third of a second before you may grab again, and an opponent who drops on top of you knocks it free. The difficulty settings change what the computer is allowed to do rather than only how fast it moves: Easy may not grab at all, Normal may, and Hard predicts where the ball will land instead of chasing where it currently sits.

How to play Smile Ball

Use the pause sheet to switch between the computer opponent and two-player, and to set Easy, Normal or Hard.
Move under the ball and let it hit you. Your speed and the part of your body it strikes decide where it goes.
Jump for anything above head height, though you cannot jump and grab in the same instant.
Hold grab as you meet the ball to catch it, carry it for up to a second, then let go to lob it.
Most goals after two minutes wins. A draw goes to golden goal, where the next one ends it.

Controls

Desktop	Against the computer, the mouse or left and right arrows move you, click or up jumps, right-click or down grabs. Two-player is W A S D against the arrow keys, S and down grabbing.
Phone or tablet	Solo, drag to move, tap to jump, hold Grab; in two-player each person drags on their own half with their own Jump and Grab buttons.
Players	One or two people on the same device. Nothing here plays over the internet.

Strategy

Everything comes off the curve of your body. The ball keeps most of its speed on contact and always gets a minimum shove away from you, so there is no dead touch — only a good or bad angle. Struck on the crown it goes up and short; caught on the flank it goes flat and long. Your own movement is added to the rebound, so running into the ball is a shot and backing away from it is a cushion.

Jumping is the expensive decision. You are airborne for about three-quarters of a second and cannot grab on the way up, so a jump started early is a jump spent watching the ball drop behind you. Wait until it is roughly a body's width away and coming toward you. The exception is defending a lob, where you want to be at the top of your arc as the ball crosses the crossbar rather than still climbing.

Against the computer, play the setting you picked. Easy aims at where the ball is now and misses by a wide margin, so a high lob over its head is close to free. Hard aims at where the ball will land, which kills the lob — beat it by taking the ball early and close to its net, before it has repositioned.

Mistakes that cost you the game

Jumping the moment the ball goes up. You land before it arrives and it sails over the space you left.
Defending from inside the goal mouth, which fills the camp timer and concedes a goal you never had to give away.
Grabbing deep in your own half with the opponent above you. They land on top, the ball pops loose, and it is loose in front of your net.

Tips

Grab near halfway and keep running before you release. The throw takes its pace from how fast the ball is swinging round you, so a standing release barely travels.
Each ground bounce costs the ball roughly a fifth of its speed, so one that has bounced twice is slow enough to catch cleanly.
In golden goal there is no clock to run down. Stop defending and go and win it.
In two-player, the down arrow is player two's grab. People miss it for whole matches.