The Free game is not a game. It is Score Buddy's blank scorekeeper, the one to reach for when whatever you are playing has no page of its own here. It does not know your rules and does not try to guess them. It asks for three things — what the game is called, what score you are playing to, and whether the most points wins or the fewest — and from there it adds up, sorts the standings and remembers everything even if you close the browser.
What it is for
It exists so that you stop keeping score on a scrap of paper that goes missing. Every score you enter is saved on the device you are using: close the page halfway through and reopen it the next day, and the players, totals and turns are still there. There is no account to create and nothing travelling to a server. It is built for a phone lying in the middle of the table, with buttons big enough to hit without looking.
Name, target and direction
The settings panel appears before you add any players and stays reachable mid-game, just above the standings, so a decision can be changed without starting over. The first field is the name of the game, up to forty characters; it becomes the heading at the top of the page, and leaving it blank keeps the generic label. The second is the final score. Leave it empty and the game has no limit and runs as long as you want it to; put a number in and every player card starts showing how far away that player still is. The field takes whole numbers from one upwards, and values such as zero or a negative number are read as no limit at all.
The third field decides who wins: Highest score or Lowest score. It is the setting that changes the most, because it reorders the standings and inverts the meaning of the target. With Highest score the target is a goal and reaching it wins; with Lowest score the target becomes a ceiling, the card of anyone who hits it reads Out, and the player left furthest below wins. That is how you score penalty games, where points are the thing to avoid.
Negative points
The Free game's keypad has a button that flips the value negative before you confirm it, so points can be taken away as well as added. Use it for penalties, for missed objectives counted at the end, for cards caught in hand, or simply to correct a score entered wrongly without restarting the game. There is also an Undo button that removes the last score recorded and tells you whose it was — handy when the tap landed on the wrong player.
Three worked examples
A board game scored at the end: give it its name, leave the target empty and keep Highest score. When the game finishes, enter each player's total in one go, or break it down by scoring category if you would rather check the arithmetic together. The standings sort themselves.
Darts is worth being straightforward about, because Score Buddy counts upwards and not down, so the classic 501 that starts at five hundred and one and falls to zero cannot be reproduced as it stands. The simplest answer is to turn it around: set the target to 501, keep Highest score and add each visit instead of subtracting it. The first player to five hundred and one has travelled the same road backwards. What it cannot do is the double to finish, which you will have to judge yourselves.
A tournament at home, table tennis or cards: enter the players once, then award a point for each match won and set the target to the number of wins that decides the thing. Alternatively press New game at the end of each match — it closes the game, files it in your history and adds a trophy beside the winner's name, clearing the scores for the next one.
Keeping score with Score Buddy
Once the players are in, tap whoever scored and enter the points on the keypad; the quick buttons +1, +5 and +10 cover the usual values and the plus and minus buttons adjust one at a time. The Next turn button keeps a count of the rounds if your game runs in rounds. Each player card shows the total, the change in position since the last update, the score just entered and, if you set a target, how much is left. The Stats tab adds a graph of how the game has developed along with the best and worst rounds, and the History tab keeps your finished games. Restart zeroes the scores but keeps the players, New game closes the game and awards the win, and Clear everything empties the table.