How to play
Tap to fire when the sight is near the centre. Closer shots score more.
About Bow Shot
Bow Shot is an archery game about patience. You have five arrows and a target with a gold centre. Your sight will not hold still: it drifts around the target in a slow, looping pattern. Wait for it to pass over the middle, loose the arrow, and hope your timing was as good as you thought.
How to play
A white crosshair wanders across the target by itself. Tap or click and an arrow lands exactly where the crosshair is at that moment. A black dot marks the spot, your score goes up, and the sight carries on moving for the next shot.
After five arrows the game shows your total. Tap to clear the target and start again.
There is no time limit. You can let the crosshair drift for as long as you like before each arrow, and the best scores come from players who are willing to wait.
Scoring
The target has five coloured rings, in the same order as a real archery target: white on the outside, then black, blue and red, with gold in the centre. Each arrow scores from 10 down to 1 depending on how far from the exact middle it lands. Every colour band covers two scores, so the inner half of the gold is a 10 and the outer half is a 9, the inner red is 8 and the outer red is 7, and so on. The sight can drift past the corners of the target, and an arrow that lands outside the white scores nothing.
With five arrows, the maximum is 50. A total in the thirties is a fair round. Forty or more is very good shooting. A perfect fifty needs five arrows in the inner gold, and it is rare.
Understanding the sight
The crosshair moves side to side and up and down at the same time, but the two movements run at different speeds. The side-to-side swing is the slower one. The up-and-down swing is faster. Put together, they trace a looping path that takes about twenty seconds to repeat. Roughly every ten seconds it passes dead through the centre, with plenty of near misses in between.
The sight is level with the centre, in height, a couple of times every second. It lines up with the centre from left to right about once a second. What you are waiting for is the moment when both happen together and the crosshair sweeps right through the gold.
It helps to watch the two movements separately. Follow only the left-to-right swing for a few seconds and get a feel for when it crosses the middle. Then notice whether the sight is high or low as it does. When a crossing is coming and the sight is also heading for mid-height, get ready.
Shooting tips
Tap a touch early. The sight is moving fastest as it passes through the centre, so a tap that feels on time lands slightly past it.
Do not settle for red. If the sight is going to cross the middle a bit high or a bit low, let it go and wait for a better pass. It costs nothing.
Take a breath between arrows. A good shot tempts you to fire the next one quickly. Reset and watch the pattern again.
Old arrows stay in the target, and the dots are a handy guide. If they are all to one side of the centre, your timing is consistently early or late.
A calmer kind of shooting game
Bow Shot rewards composure over speed, which makes a pleasant change. A round takes under a minute and works well as a turn-by-turn contest between friends.
It runs free in your browser on phones, tablets and computers, with no download.