[UPDATE] 10/6/2008 – Flick Bowling is currently on sale for $0.99 deal will only be available for a limited time.

Although Flick Bowling may be pricer than the other bowling games currently available in the App Store, the premium cost is well justified, Flick Bowling is hands down the best bowling game in the App Store to date.

Players start out by selecting their character, being asian I naturally felt compelled to choose Mr. Wong, I mean Mr. Hiner.

After choosing your character you get a brief description about them, Mr. Hiner is a strong player due to his background in geometry, but has trouble talking to women, living in his mother’s basement hasn’t helped the situation either.

Next players choose which ball to bowl with, this feature isn’t really necessary but it’s a nice added touch to allow players to personalize their bowling experience.

Players then position their character by touching the screen and moving to either side. Positioning the player to one side of the lane improves the chances of scoring a strike, it seems more difficulty to score a strike with direct shots down the middle.

Once players are happy with their positioning, they can shoot by performing a touch screen gesture in an upward motion, a lot like flicking your finger, hence the title Flick Bowling.

Players can only shoot the ball in straight lines, so don’t bother trying to do curved flick motions it won’t do any good. Hopefully Freeverse implements this feature in future updates *crosses fingers*. The Flick Bowling 1.1 update added the ability to spin the ball as it rolls down the lane, just swipe your finger left or right and the ball will spin towards the direction of your swipe.

Once you get the hang of playing Flick Bowling in Free Play mode, you’ll definitely want to try Versus mode with a friend or even playing against the computer.

There is also the option to increase the difficulty of the game, the higher the difficulty the more sensitive the game is to your flick motion when shooting the ball.

For example, when difficulty is set to lowest, regardless at what angle you flick the ball will always roll in a straight line, but if you increase difficulty the game will take into account what angle you flicked at and will send the bowling ball in that given direction accordingly.

Overall I had a great time playing this game, especially with friends, the game attracted lots of attention even from non-gamers, I’d highly recommend this game to anyone looking for some simple arcade fun. Freeverse did an excellent job on delivering a highly polished experience, it doesn’t get much better than this.