[[2026 Games#^087492|2026 Games]]  ## 2026-10-11 **Ultrapool** is quietly one of the best games I’ve played this year. Available on both **Steam** and **Android**, this is one of those “pick 3s” that are all the rage these days. Don’t click away yet though — this pick 3 is unique in you’re playing pool, and the 3 you’re picking from are pool balls. These balls all interact in different ways and represent your “build” as you try to cross a score threshold, similar to the giant, poker-shaped elephant in the room that I’m not going to mention because it’s funnier that way. There are balls that respawn when you knock them into a pocket, balls that knock other balls into pockets, balls that add more pockets to the pool table, and so on and so forth. As of writing, there are dozens of balls that fall under different categories. Further increasing the depth are “Snacks” which act as modifiers, and the cocktail bar, which you can use to fuse two balls together every few rounds. ALl of this combines to create my favorite type of roguelike, the one where you [[Roguelikes and Landslides|landslide into a broken build that breaks the game in half]]. It helps that the gameplay itself is super satisfying, espeically on a phone. That’s where I spend all my time playing **Ultrapool**, dragging my finger across it to set up the perfect trick-shot. You play it in portrait mode too, which, I’ve mentioned many a time before, is how God intended a phone to be held in the first place. The only real qualm I have with **Ultrapool** is that I wish there was more of it. More balls, more snacks, even more of the negative modifiers that you have to build around in the higher difficulty levels. But even then, I’ve gotten dozens of hours out of this game, and am very satisfied with it.