About the Hoop Shot
Hoop Shot is basketball reduced to the shot itself. The ball always leaves your hands at the same steep angle. The only thing you decide is how hard to throw it.
How it works
Press and hold, and a yellow bar grows along the bottom of the screen. If you keep holding, it reaches the end and comes back down, then up again. Release, and the ball is thrown with whatever power the bar showed.
The ball arcs up and comes down. If it drops through the red rim, it counts. There is a backboard behind the hoop, and a ball that hits it will bounce back, sometimes into the basket.
After each shot, a small red mark on the power bar shows where you released last time. That mark is the most useful thing on the screen.
The hoop is placed at a random distance and height. After two shots it moves somewhere new, and the mark is cleared. Ten shots in all.
Scoring more
Treat the first shot at each position as a range-finder. Make your best estimate and watch where the ball goes. Then use the red mark. If the ball fell short, release a little beyond the mark. If it went long, release a little before.
Small changes are enough. The bar covers the whole range from nearest to furthest, so a tiny shift in where you let go moves the ball a long way.
Remember that height needs power too. A hoop that is high and close can need as much as one that is low and far.
Release on the way up. The bar passes every level twice, rising and falling. Always using the rising pass makes your timing more consistent.
A missed first shot that teaches you the range is not wasted.
Eight from ten wins gold. It is one of the more thoughtful ball-sport HTML5 games on the site.