Half Court Duo support

Last updated 25 October 2026

• How to play
• The modes
• Folding
• Leaving a round
• Remove Ads and restoring it
• The +30 s video
• Game Center
• Sound and haptics
• Ads and your choices
• Which phones
• Your data

How to play

Flick up from the ball on the pad toward the hoop. A tap does nothing, and neither does a slow drag: it has to be a flick. The guide drawn on the court turns as you aim and brightens once letting go would throw. The next ball racks under half a second later, and up to three can be in the air at once.

• Two points a basket, and one more for a swish: a basket that never touches the rim.
• Bonus. In the last fifteen seconds of a round the backboard turns red and every basket thrown then is worth three. The bonus goes by when the ball left your thumb: a shot let go in the bonus is worth three wherever it lands, and one let go just before it is worth two.
• Heat. Make three in a row and the ball catches fire: every basket after that is worth one more, until you miss. With a swish and Heat in a bonus, one basket is worth five.
• The hoop moves. At 20 points it starts to slide from side to side; at 40 it moves faster and the backboard tilts.
• The buzzer. A shot in the air when the buzzer goes still counts.

The modes

Arcade

Sixty seconds, as many baskets as you can. Your best is kept on the phone and shown on the menu.

Daily Shootout

One hoop for everyone each day: the same moving pattern and the same two five second bonus windows for every player, on top of the last fifteen seconds. Baskets thrown in a window are worth three, as in the final fifteen seconds.

The day is the UTC day, so a new shootout starts at midnight UTC, not at your local midnight. Play it as often as you like that day; your best is the one that counts.

Streak

No clock. The first shot that is decided as a miss ends the run: a ball that rattles out is a miss, one that bounces in is a basket. Balls still in the air after the miss fly on but score nothing. Heat still applies.

Pass & Play

Two players, one phone, thirty seconds each. Type two names (up to 16 characters; they are remembered for next time), and the first player goes. At half time the game shows whose turn it is; hand the phone over and the second player taps Ready. Each half's last ten seconds are its bonus period, and Heat and the hoop start over for the second player. The higher score wins, and an equal score is a tie.

Nothing from a Pass & Play match goes to Game Center, there is no +30 s video, and no full screen advert is ever shown between the two halves.

Folding, and the ways to hold it

Half Court Duo is designed for a phone folded like a laptop: the hoop on the raised half, the court on the half on the table, every shot crossing the fold. No feature needs that, though, and every other way of holding it plays the same game.

• "Stand it up like a laptop." On a phone that folds, the menu can show this hint, with a short animation of the phone being stood up: the first time you open the game, and once a session when it is not folded like a laptop. It fades after a few seconds, takes no taps, and the menu under it works the whole time.
• Open flat. The fold is drawn as a brass rail across the middle, and the game plays over it. If you open the phone flat in the middle of a round, it pauses on Fold to continue: stand it back up like a laptop and play picks up after a 3, 2, 1, or keep it flat and tap Resume.
• On its side, like a book. The game turns into a side view of the same machine, and you flick across the fold toward the hoop. Turning the folded phone between laptop and book never pauses a round.
• Closed. The game plays on the outside screen, with a brass rail where the fold would be. Closing the phone in the middle of a round pauses it, and the round waits for you with Resume.
• A window too small to play in, such as a narrow Split View, shows Half Court Duo needs the full screen and pauses the round. Make the window full screen again and tap Resume.
• Hinge parallax moves the inside of the cabinet a little as the hinge moves, like looking into a box from a new angle. The hoop and the ball never move with it. Turn it off in Settings, Sound and feel, Hinge parallax.

Pausing, and leaving in the middle of a round

• Pause freezes everything, every ball in the air included, and Resume brings play back after a 3, 2, 1. Quit to menu on the same card ends the round without recording it.
• Leave the app mid-round, for a call or anything else, and the round is saved and paused. It is still there when you come back, even if iOS closed the game in the meantime.
• A round that had already ended when you left comes back as its results, counted once, so a best made at the buzzer is never lost.

Remove Ads, and restoring it

Remove Ads is the only thing Half Court Duo sells. Buy it from the Remove Ads chip on the main menu or the results screen, or from Settings, Remove Ads. The price shown is the App Store's, in your own currency.

To restore it on a new phone or after reinstalling, open Settings and tap Restore Purchases. The purchase belongs to your Apple Account, not to the phone, so this works on any device signed in to the account that bought it. The game then says one of:

• Ads are removed on this device. Thank you. Done.
• No previous purchase found on this Apple Account. The phone is signed in to a different Apple Account from the one that bought it. That is nearly always the answer.
• The App Store did not answer. Check the connection and try again. A purchase that was paid for is safe, and arrives by itself once the App Store answers.

Ask to Buy. If a family organiser has to approve the purchase, the game says Waiting for approval. You can keep playing. The ads go as soon as it is approved.

If a banner or a full screen advert appears after you have bought Remove Ads, that is a fault: tap Restore Purchases and check that Settings shows Ads removed. Thank you. If it does, email us. Refunds are Apple's to give, at reportaproblem.apple.com.

The +30 s video

At the buzzer of an Arcade or Daily Shootout round, the game can offer Watch for +30 s: an optional video that gives the round thirty more seconds. It is offered:

• only when a video has actually loaded, so offline, or when none is ready, there is no offer;
• at most once a round, and never in Streak or Pass & Play;
• once only: the offer is used when you tap it, so a video closed early earns nothing and the round goes to its results.

The last fifteen seconds of the extra time are a bonus period again, and Heat carries on into it. A round extended this way counts for your own best on the phone, but it is never posted to a leaderboard, and no full screen advert follows it.

Game Center

Game Center is optional, and the whole game works without it. Sign in from the Game Center page of your phone's Settings app. In the game, Settings, Game Center says who is signed in, with buttons for the Leaderboards and the Achievements.

• Four leaderboards. Arcade (your best 60 second round), Arcade Today (a fresh board every day at midnight UTC), Streak (the most baskets in a row before the first miss) and the Daily Shootout (a new one every day at midnight UTC).
• Fifteen achievements, none of them hidden, so each one says what earns it before you have it.
• What is sent. A score goes to a board only when it beats your best already on that board. Anything you earn while signed out is kept, and sent the next time you are signed in. A Daily score is sent only while its own UTC day is still open.
• What is never sent. Anything at all from Pass & Play. A round extended with the +30 s video never reaches a leaderboard and does not count for the achievements that ask for one 60 second round, though its baskets still count toward the others.
• Never over a round. If Game Center wants you to sign in while you are playing, the game holds it until the next results screen, or until you open Settings.

Sound, music and haptics

Half Court Duo plays its sound even when your phone is set to silent, and it plays alongside whatever else you are listening to rather than stopping it. The switches in Settings, Sound and feel are how you silence it: Sound, Music (which plays on the menus and the results, never during a round) and Haptics. During a round, the speaker button across from Pause turns the sound off and on.

With Reduce Motion on in iOS, the screen shake, the hinge parallax, the fold hint's animation and the chasing bulbs around the buttons stop. The menus and Settings follow your text size, up to a point; the lettering on the cabinet's signs is drawn and stays its own size.

Ads, tracking and your choices

A banner sits under the main menu and the results, never during a round. A full screen advert can follow a finished round: at most one every third round, at least 90 seconds apart, and none in your first session.

After your first finished round, the results screen shows a card titled Free to play, paid for by ads. Tap Continue and iOS asks whether Half Court Duo may track you. Either answer gives you the whole game and every reward; it only changes how adverts are chosen. To change it later, use your phone's Settings, Privacy & Security, Tracking.

In the game, Settings, Ads has:

• Personalised ads, a switch that turns adverts chosen for you off, from then on, whatever your other answers;
• Privacy options, where it applies to you (the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the American states with their own privacy laws), which reopens Google's consent choices;
• Report an ad: take a screenshot while the advert is on screen, then send it to us from there with a word about what was wrong and roughly when. Every advert in the game comes from Google, and a report lets us block that advertiser for everyone playing;
• and the privacy policy, which says what the advertising collects.

Which phones

Designed for iPhone Duo, and plays on any iPhone with iOS 27.1 or later. On a phone without a fold the game draws the fold as a brass rail across the middle of the screen, and there is nothing to fold and nothing to switch: no fold hint, no Fold to continue, and no Hinge parallax row in Settings.

It does not need a connection to play. Without one there are simply no adverts, no +30 s offer and nothing sent to Game Center until you are back online.

Your data

There is no account. Your settings, your bests, the Pass & Play names and a round you leave in the middle are kept on your phone, and deleting the game deletes them. Game Center scores and achievements belong to your Game Center account with Apple and stay after the game is deleted. The privacy policy has the rest.