A scorekeeper that works on a lawn

What it actually does

Keeping score at Mölkky by hand is more annoying than it sounds, and always for the same three reasons.

The two scoring modes. One pin is its number; several pins is the count. Everyone gets this wrong at least once a game, usually in someone's favour.

The exact-fifty rule. Sitting on 44 you need a 6, and someone has to work that out for six players every turn. Go over and you drop to 25, which people forget or apply inconsistently.

Three misses. Nobody tracks this reliably past the second round.

The app does all three while you play. Tap the pins that fell, and it scores the throw correctly, updates the running total, applies the overshoot penalty, and counts the misses. When someone reaches fifty exactly, it says so.

Works with the radio off

This is the part that took the most work and is the easiest to overlook.

Mölkky is played on lawns, in parks, on campsites and at the far end of gardens — which is to say, in exactly the places where mobile data is worst. A scorekeeper that spins a loading indicator halfway through a game is worse than a piece of paper.

So the scoring path never touches the network. The app installs to the home screen, opens without a connection, and a full game — adding players, scoring every throw, undoing a mistake, finishing and seeing the standings — runs entirely on the device. If you are signed in, games sync when a connection comes back; if you are not, they stay on the phone.

The rules it knows

• Both scoring modes — one pin scores its number, several score the count.
• Exactly fifty to win, with the drop back to twenty-five on an overshoot.
• The twenty-five-point short game, with the penalty scaled to fifteen.
• Three scoreless throws and out, or the friendlier reset-to-zero variant.
• Teams, sharing one score and one miss count.
• Undo, because someone always taps the wrong pin.

The rules of Mölkky is the full ruleset the app implements, if you want to check it against your own.

What an account adds

Nothing you need to play. A guest game is a complete game.

An account exists for the things that genuinely require a server: your game history following you to a new phone, statistics across all your games, friends, and clubs with shared results. If none of that appeals, the app never asks again.

There is no advertising, in either mode. The app is free because it is a small piece of software that costs very little to run, not because you are the product.

Languages

The app is in English, Dutch, French and German — the same four as this site. French players get 12quilles, which is what the game's twelve pins are called in French.

Pages about the app