Why Keilo?

It starts with a game

A Mölkky game can be a quick match with friends after work. It can be a family game on a summer afternoon. It can be a tournament where, ten minutes earlier, you did not know the people across from you.

The game itself is simple. Twelve pins. One throwing pin. First to 50.

Then you play. Win or lose, you build memories with friends. Later, over a beer, you replay the match. A few weeks on, you may remember who won. You probably do not remember the score.

Most of it disappears when the pins go back in the box, except the memories you keep.

I wanted to build something around that, so people can share the passion and those short-lived moments.

So I built Keilo

Keilo keeps the games you play and the time you spend with friends. It is for the scores you forget, the matches you have not played yet, the tournament you want to remember or the one you are looking for, the player whose first name you remember and whose number you do not, or the club you are about to join.

There is a way in for everyone.

• If you play seriously, ranked matches, Elo, training, and tournaments are there.
• If you play with friends, it is just as simple. You create a match, even without an account, and it stays on your phone.
• If you would rather not use your phone, Keilo also lets you record the match later. Keep a trace of the scores, and enter them when you have more time.

That distinction matters to me. Mölkky does not need to get complicated because there is a phone in a pocket.

The hard part is not the score

Keeping score is not the difficult part.

The difficult part is an app that works for everyone, and especially when you are outside, with a connection or without one.

I spend a lot of time on small things that set it apart from other apps. I want it to stay natural, and in the spirit of Mölkky.

Mölkky is bigger than an app

I do not want Keilo to be only a scorekeeper.

Clubs play every week. Tournaments bring together people from different countries. Some people are discovering Mölkky. Some have been playing for years.

I have played in different places. What strikes me is how fast the game makes a connection.

You do not need a shared language to know a good throw. You do not need to know someone before you argue, politely, about whether a pin was down. You do not need their first name before you ask for a rematch.

That is the part I want Keilo to help keep.

One game becomes many

One match is not much. A hundred matches are.

You start seeing who you play most often. You remember your best scores. You notice you always struggle with the same tournament format. A casual game becomes a regular evening. A regular evening becomes a club. A club hosts a tournament.

The app can connect those pieces. Your matches. Your stats. Your teammates. Your club. The tournaments around you. The people you have not met yet.

That is what I mean by Play together.

It is not really about the app. It is about everything that happens around the pins.

Behind Keilo

Keilo is an independent project. I design it, I build it, I fix it, and I talk to the people who use it.

It is ongoing work. Some things are polished. Some are not. Some ideas will change with feedback from players and clubs. The aim is to build Keilo with the Mölkky community.

If you played a game with Keilo and something felt awkward, tell me. If there is something you want in the app, tell me that too.

If you played a great game today, I hope you recorded it.

Thibaud, from Keilo