The pitch for Ultrapool is short enough to fit in a sentence, which is usually a good sign: it is pool, but the balls have abilities and you build a run out of them. Developer Icedrop Games and publisher offbrand games put it out on August 24, simultaneously on Steam, iOS and Android — and the mobile versions are not an afterthought port arriving six months late.
Balatro, but on felt
The developers make the comparison themselves, describing Ultrapool as playing like a pool version of Balatro crossed with Super Auto Pets. The structure bears it out. You have ten rounds to survive. Each round sets a score target. Pocketing balls generates score, score above the target converts to money, and money goes into buying and improving the set of balls you rack up next time.
The balls are where the run diverges. There is a ghost ball that reappears on the table after being pocketed. A chicken ball that lays spherical eggs. A bomb that detonates if it takes too many impacts. The Earth, which qualifies because it is round and rolls nicely — the studio’s stated only requirement, alongside a firm no-cubes policy.
The cocktail bar is the combo engine
The system that turns this from a novelty into a build game is the bar. Once it opens, you can ask the bartender to mix any two balls, and he returns something new. This is the point where Ultrapool starts producing the sort of interactions that look like they should break the game open and then turn out to be barely enough — the specific flavour of escalation that made Balatro work.
Physically it is still pool. Aim, set power, watch the projection line, and hope the collision chain does what you planned. The tables carry pocket multipliers — the x2 markers sitting on the corner and side pockets — along with per-round modifiers, so table geometry is part of the build decision rather than a fixed constant.
Why it suits a phone
This is one of the rare cases where the mobile version might be the definitive one. The table is presented vertically, the entire interaction is a drag-and-release aim, and a run is short enough to finish on a commute. There is no twitch element and no camera to manage. Games designed around a single well-considered input per turn tend to survive the transition to touch better than anything else, and Ultrapool is built almost entirely out of those turns.
Where to get it and what it costs
On iOS it is listed on the App Store as a free download from offbrand games inc. On Google Play it sits under the package com.icedropgames.pool. The Steam version is a paid release at $11.99, currently discounted 20 percent to $9.59 for launch week, and it has a free demo on the store page if you want to try the loop before committing.
That split — free on phones, paid on PC — is worth going in aware of, since it usually indicates the mobile build monetises somewhere the desktop one does not. Either way, the barrier to finding out whether roguelike pool is a thing you needed in your life is currently zero on the platform most people will play it on.
