Darts Champ! Aims For The Bullseye (But So Does Everyone Else)
Darts Champ! ($0.99) by Digital Oranges Interactive is a new entry into the somewhat crowded dart sub-genre in the App Store. It features friendly or tournament play, and uses official dart rules.
Most dart games either use a flick throwing system or the accelerometer. Darts Champ! uses the latter. You try to balance the cross hairs as they wobble precariously around the screen and then tap either lower corner of the screen when you are ready to throw. It is a decent method of simulating a real dart experience, though it is a little on the easier side. Upon impact you will get a zoomed view of where you hit (unless you get a bounce out).
Your opponents are dart pros that you have to unlock by winning tournaments, and they will give you decent competition. One help mode that you can turn on or off is the "checkout hint" feature. It highlights the specific area of the board that you should hit so that you can reach the score of zero with a double. The graphics are good, and the gameplay is solid, but overall the app is quite feature barren.
One difficulty of competing in a full sub-genre such as darts is that there are going to inevitably be several well designed applications that are free. Darts Champ! is better than most of these, but isn't as good as many of the paid darts games. Just a few features that most paid games have that DC! doesn't include: multiplayer of any sort, trophies, achievements, variation in darts or throwing room, and photo mode where you can throw darts at an imported picture (of your boss, for example).
Darts Champ! is a good, no-nonsense dart throwing game with solid gameplay. However, unless it either adds more features or goes free, it really can't keep up with other dart games, and won't satisfy most users for the price.
