Take the table online, one-on-one or two-on-two, rated or among friends. Or pull up chairs at one PC for a match or Scotch doubles.
With other people
Play for your rating, open a private table for your friends, or team up for Scotch doubles, online or at one PC.
You against one opponent, shot for shot, at any of the thirteen games.
Two pairs, partners taking alternate shots, and the scoreboard says whose shot it is.
Online, players talk only with ready-made messages and gestures, so nothing typed ever reaches you, and a dropped connection is waited for and picked up again. What you need to play online
Online
Online matches are a single rack in a random venue, with the standard cue for every player, so the table is the same for everyone.
Join the queue for a game and you are paired with the nearest rating. The longer you wait, the wider the search.
Open a table for the game you choose and invite your Steam friends to it. A friendly: ratings, records and achievements are left alone, and you can play again at the same table as often as you all like.
Everyone who enters the same lobby name plays one knockout, two to eight players, seeded by rating with byes. Players knocked out can watch the matches still going.
If a connection drops mid-match, that player's place is kept for 60 seconds while their game reconnects by itself, and everyone sees the countdown. The match then goes on from where it was.
Forfeit a rated match and it is a loss, with the change to your rating shown. Leaving a private table costs nothing.
Coming with the in-game economy: every online frame pays every player 25 Cue Credits, win or lose, in 1v1 and 2v2 alike. How online play pays
Each player's game plays the other's shot again and compares the result. A second mismatch abandons the match with nothing recorded.
Manners
Players speak only with ready-made phrases and gestures from a wheel of eight, each shown in its reader's own language. Nobody can type anything, so nothing typed can ever reach you.
Choose which eight are on your wheel, and have quick chat on, for friends only, or off.
Block a player from the pause menu or the result, and you are not matched with them again. They are never told.
At one PC
Before you play online
What online play needs from your PC and your connection, and what happens if the line drops.
Free to try
The demo is 8-ball in the Classic Room, with its whole spoken tutorial, a practice table and a computer player, for Windows, Linux and macOS. The full game is coming to Early Access on Steam at $12.99.