Game modes

Practice

Play against bots, with or without a connection. It's the place to warm up, try a new character or kill time on the bus.

• Choose your opponent's level from 9 tiers, Newbie up to National Team. Each tier wears the same rank badge as in Ranked, so you know what level you're practising against.
• Choose 11, 15 or 21 points a game, and one game or best of three.
• Play singles or doubles: in doubles you and a bot partner face two bots, all at the tier you picked.
• Before you sign in, you play with the two starting characters: The Student and Ribbon Girl.

Practice gives no rewards: no coins, no experience, nothing towards your match count or rank. It's just for training, so lose as much as you like.

Friendly

Online matches against real people, for fun but still rewarded. You need to sign in inside the game (with Google or an email).

• The game looks for players near your level first, then widens the search if it takes a while. If nobody turns up, a bot fills in after about half a minute (closer to a minute in doubles), so you never wait forever.
• You choose the points, the number of games, singles or doubles; only players who chose the same are matched together.
• Doubles with a friend: Friendly doubles has an invite button. Send your friend the 6-character code or a link, meet in the same lobby and search together.
• Friendly uses your racket, shoes and string tension, but no bonus stat points.
• Every Friendly match pays coins, experience and career points.

Ranked singles and Ranked doubles

This is where you find out how good you are. Ranked opens after 5 online matches and always uses the official best of three games to 15, with no options.

• Singles and doubles are separate ladders: your singles rank doesn't affect your doubles rank.
• There are 9 big tiers, each split into smaller steps. Every step takes 100 points; wins add points and losses take them away, at most 40 a match. Beating a higher-ranked player earns more, and so does winning by a wide margin.
• Your first 5 matches each season are placement matches, worth double.
• Leaving a match costs more than losing it. If your connection drops, you have 60 seconds to get back in.
• Each season lasts three months. When a new one starts, your rank drops 2 steps and you play your placements again.
• Every season ends with season rewards: gems for the best rank you finished on (singles or doubles), from 20 to 400. You need 5 Ranked matches that season. The first time you open the game in the new season, they're waiting for you to collect.
• In Ranked you get bonus stat points for your current rank: 1 point per big tier, up to 8 points, no more than 3 on any one stat. You choose the order they're added in the game.
• Ranked doubles with a friend works when you're at most one big tier apart.

1. Newbie
2. Novice
3. Lower-Intermediate
4. Intermediate
5. Upper-Intermediate
6. Advanced
7. Semi-pro
8. Pro
9. National Team

Private room

Your room, your rules. Great for playing friends, running a small tournament in your group, or settling who's better.

• Open a room from the Play tab. You get a 6-character code and a button to copy an invite link; friends type the code in the game or open the link to join.
• The host (wearing the crown) sets everything: singles or doubles, points, number of games, whether opponents' stamina is shown, and whether bonus stat points count.
• The host can add bots to empty seats and choose their tier. Use the swap button to arrange doubles teams.
• Rooms have no countdown and never start by themselves: the host presses Start when everyone is ready.
• Reloaded the page in the lobby by accident? Your seat is held for 15 seconds.
• Private room matches don't count towards rank, stats, coins or career, so play as freely as you like.

Career and leaderboards

Your rank shows how strong you are this season. Your career shows how long you've been playing, and it never resets.

• Every Friendly or Ranked match adds career points: a Ranked win 30, a loss 10; a Friendly win 12, a loss 4. There are bonuses for match milestones and win streaks.
• Points turn into a career level with 6 badges of 5 levels each:

1. Bronze
2. Silver
3. Gold
4. Platinum
5. Diamond
6. Legend

• Tap someone's name on the versus screen, the results or a leaderboard to open their player card: singles and doubles rank, win rate, streaks, fastest smash, longest rally, favourite characters and more.
• Leaderboards cover the season (singles, doubles) and all time by career points. Open them from the Season tab in the game.

Unlocking as you play online

Once you're signed in, the game opens up with the online matches you play (Practice doesn't count):

• After 1 match: the shop.
• After 2 matches: the Season tab, with daily missions and Getting started missions (one-time, extra coins for your first matches).
• After 3 matches: gear (rackets, shoes, string tension, bonus points).
• After 5 matches: Ranked.

The Characters tab is always open. Signed in, you see the whole cast and can buy more with the coins you earn by playing.