Jules Van Dongen has been an active member on GoDartsPro for quite a while and when he visited the Winmau HQ in December they talked about his darts training he said:
“GoDartsPro – I use pretty much all the exercises and games they have on there, trying to get high up on the challenges leaderboards.”
The one routine he was missing was the game we now launch:
Stars & Stripes
The game is a finishing game where four of the most important doubles are used repeatedly: D20, D18, D16 and D12. You need to finish the doubles as you would in a game of 501, so if you miss D20 and hit S20 you have the score 20 left to try to finish with your last two darts.
When you finish an out you get one point but if you fail to finish you loose one point and you try to reach 10 points for each out. If you nail the double and got darts left you’ll try to finish the current out once more.
That means you could finish 3 doubles in one throw (3 darts). Jules practise this game either alone or with a friend and says:
“Playing the game with a friend can be quite competitive but it can drag on if you’re not focused and not playing well.”
Game Levels:
It is always fun to add games suggested by great players they’ve been using previously to get them where they are today. But the games the pro’s are using can be too tough and challenging for most so we always try to find options and features to make the games more fun, suitable for more players, and to use to advance as they improve.
Therefore we’ve added different options and the stars feature where you can try to unlock all the 3 stars by doing:
2 finishes in 1 throw (3 darts)
3 finishes in 1 throw (3 darts)
6 finishes in 2 throws (6 darts)
Game Duration:
Jules is playing the routine until he reach 10 points for each out but this could take hours for many players so we added the option 5 and 3 as well. If you play this game for the first time, set the duration to 3 while trying the game.
Game Play:
The default option is to play the game with the outs in consecutive order. That means if your game duration is set to 10 you need to finish the double 20, 10 times until you move on to next.
This can be tiresome, and it is easy to lose focus if you’re not good enough, so we added the option to alter the doubles 20, 18, 16 and 12 until you reach enough hits/points.
Missed Out:
With the game play set to Consecutive order you have three options for when you miss an out:
* One step back
* Stay on target
* One step back but lock finished double
The first two are quite easy to understand but the third means that once you’ve finished all the D20’s, this row/stripe is locked so even if you fail to finish the first D18, you continue throwing for D18.
The options “Stay on target” and “One step back but lock finished double” makes the game a bit easier to finish.
Conclusions
This is a great game since you repeatedly working on finishing the most common doubles you’re facing in a game of 501. The game is also challenging enough and with the different options and the gamification to try to unlock the stars, I think it is a fun game to use over and over again.
Can you unlock all 3 stars? Try the game and share your success on social media
—–ENDS—–
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