I childishly snigger whenever I see a clip of some pro cornhole action on my social medias; this is a sport named after a slang term for an anus after all. And with terminology such as floppy bag, woody, dirt bag, hanger, slider and back door, it is an innuendo enthusiasts dream sport.
But the truth is, the popularity of the sport is increasing. The American Cornhole League only formed in 2015 but already has a videogame associated with it – ACL Pro Cornhole. Coming from FarSight Studios who have carved out a space in the market in recent times designing games around more niche sports, can it further increase the popularity of the sport?
If you’ve played one of the PBA Pro Bowling games from FarSight Studios, then ACL Pro Cornhole will feel right at home to you. Some generic rock music welcomes you to the main menu that has an almost identical look and feel to the bowling games. You can see which pros you have unlocked and how to unlock more, and which bag design you prefer.
There are two modes to choose from: Career and Quickplay. Quickplay allows you to play a singular game of singles or doubles, and you can choose to play against the CPU or in local multiplayer matches. The main mode is Career.
Scoring in cornhole is very simple. In each round you have four beanbags for a maximum of 12 points to aim for. A beanbag on the board at the end is worth one point, get it into the hole and it awards three points. Your opponent can knock bags off the board but can also inadvertently knock them down the hole for you. After each player has thrown their four bags, the variance in the two scores is added to a players match total and the first to 21 points wins the game.
After choosing which pro you would like to play as, you are instantly thrown into a mini-league round-robin tournament of sorts. I still haven’t fully worked out how this works because after a few games this league table changes into a knockout bracket featuring many of the same players, regardless of how you perform in the round-robin matches. Win or lose, you get to do it all over again. To call this a career mode is a bit misleading.
With only these modes, you will have experienced everything in ACL Pro Cornhole in a very short time. And sadly, there isn’t much found in the environments to help mix things up.
Each and every game takes place within the same four walls; a very non-descript ‘arena’ that may as well be an office block reception area with a few gazebos thrown up to advertise sausages. Character models are original Xbox era, you will tire of hearing the same commentary lines after only two rounds as they are constantly repeated. It’s not helped that there appears to be a bug where the crowd will applause without pausing. They will start after a good throw and not abate for several minutes.
And yet, and yet, the gameplay found in ACL Pro Cornhole is really quite good. There isn’t a tutorial at all to help explain things, so newbies have to learn everything on the job. But it is quite surprising how much goes into simply throwing a beanbag. It’s one thing to simply throw it into the hole each time, but ACL Pro Cornhole allows you to set the distance, pitch, spin speed, angle of release and even which side you want it to land on. Beginners will likely only need distance and pitch, but more advanced tactics will see you utilising all available tweaks to make the exact shot you need.
Once you have made all your amendments, pull back on the right stick as if you were playing a golf game and then push it forward to throw your bag. A blue area on the power bar will show you the sweet spot. However, it feels a bit off. Anything just short or in the first half of the blue area is typically the sweet spot of the sweet spot. Anything more than that and you will see your bag fly over the board and not score. There is a fine margin of error here.
And whilst I may not be fully clued up on the minutiae of beanbag physics, for the most part, they seem to behave as they should in ACL Pro Cornhole. Seeing them bounce off each other doesn’t cause any surprise collisions, and likewise with the way they hang off the redzone as either a blocker or waiting to be gathered in with the next air mail.
But that doesn’t mean that ACL Pro Cornhole couldn’t do with trying a little bit more. It is on the Xbox Store priced at £24.99 and that is without any Xbox Series X|S enhancements. Whilst it feels cheap – no pun intended – to dunk on a game purely because it is overpriced, there isn’t enough here to warrant that price point.
For a first attempt at making a cornhole game, ACL Pro Cornhole has the fundamentals nailed down. Fun, solid gameplay and believable physics help make this a decent first go, but everything else needs tightening up: commentary, game modes, graphics and the price all let the overall package down. If these can be improved in a second game with a few extra additions, ACL Pro Cornhole could usher in new waves of fans to this funny sounding sport.
Try something different in ACL Pro Cornhole on the Xbox Store
