Hinge Alley support

Last updated 26 October 2026

• How to roll
• The modes
• Daily Alley
• Pass & Play
• Folding, and the ways to hold it
• Pausing, and leaving in the middle of a frame
• The +3 balls video
• Remove Ads, and restoring it
• Game Center
• Sound, music and haptics
• Ads, tracking and your choices
• Which phones
• Your data

How to roll

Flick from the half you roll on toward the fold: up the screen when the phone stands like a laptop, across it when it is on its side like a book. When you touch down, a faint fan on the lane shows where the roll is aimed. The ball runs up the lane, hops the fold and climbs the ramp on the top half, then leaves the lip for the brass plate.

• Speed is everything. Too soft and the ball dies on the ramp and rolls back to you for nothing. Harder carries it higher up the plate, where the bigger numbers are.
• The plate. Five hexagon rings, 10 on the outside to 50 in the middle, and a "C" corner pocket worth 100 on each side, with its own 100 LED. A ball that misses every hole scores nothing.
• Aim and spin. Flick across the lane to aim off the middle; the walls bounce a ball back in, which is one way into a corner pocket. A curve in your flick puts spin on the ball.
• A frame is nine balls. Par is 270, a frame of nothing but 30s, and the results say how far above or below it you were.

The modes

Classic

Nine balls, every ring and pocket counts. Your best is kept on the phone and shown on the menu.

Hundreds

Nine balls, and only the corner pockets count: your score is how many of the nine went into one.

Rush

45 seconds on the clock after a 3, 2, 1, and as many balls as you can roll, up to two on the lane at once. A ball still rolling at the buzzer counts.

Daily Alley

A Classic frame on today's lane (below).

Pass & Play

Two players on one phone (below).

Daily Alley

Every day the alley gets its own wear: a pattern of tiny drifts in the lane that nudges a ball as it rolls. Everybody playing on the same day rolls the same worn lane, so everybody's score that day is on the same alley. The day is the UTC day, so a new alley starts at midnight UTC, not at your local midnight. Play it as often as you like; the results show your best today.

Pass & Play

Two players, one phone, nine balls each. Type two names (up to 16 characters; they are remembered for next time, and a blank one is Player 1 or Player 2), and the first player rolls. When the first frame is over the game says who rolled what and whose turn it is; pass the phone across and the second player taps Ready. Most points wins, and an equal score is a tie.

Nothing from a Pass & Play game goes to Game Center or touches your own bests, there is no +3 balls offer, and no full screen advert is ever shown between the two frames.

Folding, and the ways to hold it

Hinge Alley is designed for a phone folded like a laptop: the ramp and the plate on the raised half, the lane on the half on the table, every ball crossing the fold. No feature needs that, though, and every other way of holding it plays the same game.

• The fold hint. On a phone that folds, the menu can show a short card with a little 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 by itself, takes no taps, and the menu under it works the whole time.
• Open flat. If you open the phone flat in the middle of a frame, it pauses on Fold to continue: stand it back up and play picks up again, or keep it flat and tap Resume. Flat, the fold is drawn as a brass rail across the middle.
• On its side, like a book. The game shows the machine face on and the ball comes up over the cabinet's sill.
• Closed. The game plays on the outside screen. Closing the phone in the middle of a frame pauses it (Closed mid-frame. Your frame waits for you.), and Resume brings it back.
• A window too small to play in shows Hinge Alley needs the full screen and pauses the frame. Make the window full screen again to carry on.
• Hinge parallax shifts the cabinet's backdrop a little as the hinge moves. Turn it off in Settings, Sound and feel, Hinge parallax.

Pausing, and leaving in the middle of a frame

• Pause freezes every ball on the lane where it was, and Quit to menu on the same card leaves the frame.
• Leave the app mid-frame, for a call or anything else, and the frame pauses (Welcome back. Your frame waits for you.). The game saves the frame as each ball is decided, so it is still there when you come back, even if iOS closed the game in the meantime.
• A frame that had already finished when you left comes back as its results.

The +3 balls video

When the ninth ball of a Classic or Daily Alley frame settles, and your total is within 60 of your best for that mode, the game can ask +3 BALLS? Watch a video for three more balls. It is entirely your choice: No thanks takes you straight to your results. It is offered:

• only when a video has actually loaded, so offline, or when none is ready, there is no offer;
• only once you have a best above 0 in that mode, at most once a frame, and never in Hundreds, Rush or Pass & Play;
• once only: the offer is spent when you tap it, so a video closed early earns nothing and the frame goes to its results.

Watch it to the end and three more balls are racked. A frame with extra balls counts for your best, not the leaderboards: it is never posted to Game Center, and no full screen advert follows it. Remove Ads does not remove this video, because it is only ever there if you choose it.

Remove Ads, and restoring it

Buy Remove Ads 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 Remove Ads. 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 is restored on its own 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; a refunded Remove Ads brings the ads back.

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 whether you are signed in, with buttons for the Leaderboards and the Achievements.

• What is sent. A score goes to a board only when it beats your best already on that board, and a score of 0 is never sent.
• What is never sent. Anything at all from Pass & Play, and a frame extended with +3 balls never reaches a leaderboard.

Sound, music and haptics

Every sound in Hinge Alley is synthesized by the game. It plays even when your phone is set to silent, so the switches in Settings, Sound and feel are how you silence it: Sound, Music (on the menu, Settings and the results, never during a frame) and Haptics. During a frame, the Sound button across from Pause turns the sound off and on. Settings, Look, CRT screen lays faint scanlines and a glass sheen over the machine; it is off until you turn it on.

Ads, tracking and your choices

A banner sits under the main menu and the results, never during a frame. A full screen advert can appear as a finished frame reaches its results: at most every third finished frame, at least 90 seconds after the last one, never in your first session with the game, never in the middle of a Pass & Play game, and never after a frame you played on with +3 balls.

After your first finished frame, the results screen shows a card titled Free to play, paid for by ads. Tap Continue and iOS asks whether Hinge Alley 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:

• a line saying whether ads are on, and if not, why;
• Personalised ads, a switch that turns adverts chosen for you off, from then on, whatever your other answers;
• Privacy options, when Google's consent software shows it where you live (as it does in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland), 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, this site's privacy page, 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 screen, and there is nothing to fold: no fold hint, no Fold to continue, and no Hinge parallax switch in Settings. On an iPad it runs as an iPhone app.

It does not need a connection to play. Without one there are simply no adverts, no +3 balls offers, nothing to buy and nothing sent to Game Center.

Your data

There is no account. Your settings, your bests, the Pass & Play names and a frame 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.