Tennis has always been considered among the most popular sports in the world. Its attractiveness goes beyond the fast-paced action and very competitive nature of the sport. Tennis, compared to other popular sports, is relatively more accessible to people of different ages and abilities as there are an abundance of tennis courts available to the public and you only need a racket and a tennis ball to start playing.
Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash is a tennis game on iOS and Android from Miniclip, that perfectly mixes its casual gameplay with simple mechanics anchored on the basics of the actual sport. The term “Mini” in Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash may mislead you into thinking that it does not offer much beyond the promise of being easy to pick up and play. However, Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash features an abundance of unique courts to play in and various players that you can customize and strengthen throughout your virtual tennis career.
The initial tutorial session that greets you will be as short and as simple as can be expected from a Miniclip game and, surprisingly, you will come to appreciate how easier it is to perform different shots in the post-tutorial matches. To be honest, Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash is one of those casual games that are so easy to learn yet very difficult to master, especially considering that you will always be pitted against real people from across the globe.
With some time and dedication, as well as applying the tips and strategies we will discuss in this guide, we will help you be on your way toward bagging more wins across matches and ultimately dominating every court!
1. Master The Basics
As much as you can appreciate the quick and simple tutorial session you go through after launching Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash, the time you spend learning the basics is just a small fraction of the learning aspect of the game. On the other end of the spectrum, every match you engage in will have its share of knowledge and experience to impart and since there are no training sessions available to you after the tutorial, you will have to consider the initial set of matches you engage in as your basic training grounds.
The 1-on-1 game mode will start you off with Central Park as the initially available tennis court. Although this serves as the beginner level that aims to immerse you a little deeper into the basics as well as familiarize you with potential strategies, it comes with an entrance fee of 50 gold. This essentially introduces you to the idea of how basic matches go. The succeeding arenas you will unlock will have higher entrance fees paid by both players and the prize awarded to the winner is double the entrance fee so it is analogous to simply taking the loser’s entry fee.
Every win in a match also earns you leader points equal to the amount of gold you obtain. Leader points determine your rank in the league and leaderboards, and the higher your league and position within it, the more rewards you can earn at the end of each week. You can check your ranking status via the “Rank” button on the left side of the home screen. Note that efforts to earn leader points and climb up the ranks will impact your rewards for the League Leaderboard, the World Leaderboard, and the Country Leaderboard so you are working for 3 different ranks and prizes.
Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash comes packed with a variety of characters you can unlock and upgrade, along with numerous gears you can equip to your chosen character. With the upgrade system for the players and the gears you choose, no 2 players will likely have the same stats. Beyond the differences in characters, stats, and gears, you can also further customize your character with numerous outfits and even win poses.
Upgrading characters and gears is a necessity as you can expect to be matched against much stronger players as you move forward to other arenas and climb up the leagues. Every bit of upgrade you invest in does not just lead to higher stats and potentially better performance in the matches, it also earns you EXP to level up your account. Although higher account levels do not necessarily make you stronger, reaching a new level always comes with a set of handsome rewards like gold, gems, and even packs.
Higher-tier tennis courts are likewise locked behind level milestones and the only way to play across every available tennis court in the game is to reach level 24. As playing and winning in more prestigious arenas will cost more, you can expect it to become more and more challenging to bag wins.
As the risks of losing the entry fee you paid grow, the exponential increase in gold rewards, as well as leader points, make it all worth it. To check your level as well as other details of your career, you can simply click on the avatar at the upper left side of the home screen.
There is no in-game stamina or energy that delimits how much time you want to spend challenging players across Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash matches. However, considering that you need to spend gold to enter any match, there is essentially a limit to which courts you can play in even after you unlocked every one of them. As gold is also required for you to be able to upgrade your characters and gears, you will find yourself always having to manage your supply of it.
2. Know What Each Type Of Shot Is For
For the uninitiated, watching a tennis match looks as simple as passing the ball back and forth with your opponent using a tennis racket, with the player successfully managing to have the opponent fail to return the ball earning a point. Understandably, the first player to reach a certain number of points wins the match and takes the reward. While this is intrinsically correct and can be considered an oversimplified explanation of the sport, it holds its own set of mechanics that make it unique.
There are different types of shots in Tennis although Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash makes understanding shot varieties easier by categorizing it into 3 types, not necessarily similar to how they are in real tennis. Players can choose to utilize a topspin, a lob, or a slice throughout the match. During the tutorial, you will only be seeing the distinct buttons that represent each shot type one at a time but seeing these buttons simultaneously at the lower right side of the screen on your first real match makes it a lot more convenient.
The Topspin in Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash serves as the most basic shot and will be the button to use for the usual responses to an opponent’s shot. Although topspin by conventional definition in tennis is a shot type based on how the ball is hit, which should make it rotate forward to influence a faster drop of the ball, using the topspin shot in the game is comparable to a basic forehand or backhand shot.
A Lob shot is usually considered a shot for more experienced players and can be utilized as a tool for both offense and defense. Lob shots are aimed higher than conventional shots. Doing so will either aim to make the shot go past the player close to the net, making it more difficult for the opponent to catch the ball, or stretch the time between the shot and the opponent’s response to be able to position yourself much better after the opponent returns the shot.
Lob shots can be tricky and can even put you at a disadvantage if done incorrectly. An example of this is trying to get the shot past the opponent who is close to the net but fails and the opponent manages to return the ball much easier.
Finally, a Slice in tennis is considered a groundstroke that puts a backspin on the ball. Players need to strike the ball with a slicing gesture, meaning that the racket will be angled almost flat or diagonally in contrast with usual shots that aim to strike the ball exactly adjacent to the strings.
In Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash, Slice shots are like the opposite of lob shots and make the ball fly much lower than a conventional shot, shortening the time between shots and responses and typically aimed to speed up the exchange of shots between opposing players.
Using any of the 3 shots can be easily performed by simply tapping the shot type button of your choice. However, there are charged shots that are more powerful and can add speed ad variety to the types of shots you pull. Charged shots can be done by tapping and holding a shot button earlier and releasing it once you are ready to strike. Charged shots or power shots can make it more challenging for your opponent to respond strategically or to even receive it.
Knowing the difference between the different shots is just the tip of the iceberg within the tennis court, so to speak. What matters more is how you identify instances where one of the three different shots becomes the most appropriate to use. Likewise, tennis can be considered a game of strategy and anticipation, where you plan on the next set of strokes you will use and at the same time try to predict how your opponent will respond.
3. Familiarize Yourself With Different Characters
Most beginners will typically be less discerning when it comes to identifying and assessing the opposing player’s play style. Perhaps, engaging in a match on the same court or playing against opponents with about the same amount of leader points can give the impression of similarity in terms of the level of expertise or evenness in the amount of experience. You will come to discover sooner that even in the starting arena, some players will simply stand out.
The variances between player skills and player styles make every match you engage in Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash a unique one, ensuring that the experience of playing through several matches one after another will never be monotonous. Beyond differing playing styles, Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash also provides a dynamic set of characters to unlock and upgrade, further providing variety to the ygameplay experience.
You will start with a handful of characters to choose from and you can unlock additional ones from the packs you win from matches or claim from achievements and special events, just like gears. Every character has a unique appearance that will most likely be a determinant as to which one you will choose. Way beyond that, however, each character has a unique set of stats, expertise, and special skills that make them different from one another.
Characters can also be categorized based on their rarity grades and with 5 different rarity grades, you can have common, rare, epic, legendary, or mythical characters. Rarity grades determine how easy or difficult it can be to obtain the character’s cards and also imply the relative superiority of the character’s starting stat points and specializations.
On the player’s screen, which you can access by clicking on the character icon within the Gear menu, you will easily see the player’s specialty at the lower left side of the window. Specialties focus on the type of ground the court has, which can be grass, clay, or hard. Characters playing in the courts that have the specific terrain of their specialty will have a power boost so be sure to consider specialties as you hop from one type of court to another.
A character’s unique skill should also be taken into account when choosing your player. Unique skills can always be active or can be triggered effect. For example, Damir Matic’s special ability is that his wristbands will have an extra 20% boost, meaning that they will remain active throughout the match.
On the other hand, Evan Taylor and Emily Washington will have a 20% stat boost for a point after they score an Ace. This means that the latter characters’ special ability will not give them an advantage for the entire duration of the match as it needs to be triggered first and will only remain active until a point has been made.
In most cases, it becomes easy to simply choose the character with the highest overall stats in your roster. As acquiring character cards works a lot like gacha, given that you will never know beforehand which cards you will get from the packs, each player will likely have different characters with the highest overall stats. However, it becomes important to look into every player’s stats, along with the gears they have equipped.
Speed can be attributed to how fast a player can move within the court, meaning that a player with higher speed can travel faster from one side of the court to the other. Speed can sound like it is the most important stat to invest in given the consideration but the rest of the stats matter a lot as well. Whenever you aim your shot, it will hardly ever go exactly by the projection.
How close or far your actual shot is compared to the projection and how consistently you can nail the projected shot is impacted by the player’s level of precision. Precision also applies to the chances of always hitting the ball your opponent throws at you in instances where you can miss the response.
The Forehand and Backhand refer to basic shot types as to how you hit the ball. Forehand is considered the more basic of the two and takes place when you swing the racket towards the body from an outward position while the Backhand is its opposite. The stats for both can be attributed to how strong your swings are and more forehand and backhand strength affects the speed of your swings and the relative speed of the ball you strike.
The service stat exclusively affects the strength of your serve. For beginners, the serve may only appear as an initial shot from the baseline that initiates the round and will most likely be returned but for experienced and veteran players who master serves, it can become an extra avenue to score points against the opposing player.
Last but not least is Stamina, which determines how much energy the player has within the match. Every movement and every swing of the racket you perform consumes stamina so even the fastest player will prove to be at a disadvantage if he does not have sufficient stamina to sustain his energy within the match.
4. Exercise Prudence With Upgrades
The collection and upgrading aspects of Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash, much like in any other game, can be considered one of its most addictive elements as well. Having a growing number of gears to equip can be exciting on its own but seeing how each one can still be improved further can exponentially increase the thrills.
An important point to consider, however, is that every upgrade you invest in will cost gold on top of the extra cards needed for the action. As for the cards, they have no other purpose. For the gold, though, you will always have to keep in mind that you need the basic currency to be able to partake in matches.
At the start of your journey, you will likely have an abundance of gold to spare for several upgrades. Given that the cost of upgrades increases with each new level, upgrading without any regulation whatsoever will likely lead to instances of needing more gold than what you currently have.
For one, having your earned gold sit idly instead of investing them in gears may sound like a waste of it, but then, what you want to ensure is that you will always be able to afford to partake in matches whenever you choose to and also be able to readily upgrade a piece of gear that you need.
Gears, just like the players have their unique set of stats that gets added to the player if you equip them. Considering that gears also have rarity grades, higher rarity gears are expected to either have more stats affected or have higher values of stats provided. Since you will likely be obtaining more common-grade gear cards, it can happen that the ones having the best stats following a series of upgrades will prove to be the better choice.
With regard to upgrades and gold costs, it is important to note that even before spending on an upgrade, you will already see the overall stats of the upgraded gear. In this sense, you can determine if investing in a specific gear will readily benefit you, and if that is not the case, then you might as well hold off on the upgrade.
In case there are numerous viable options for gears you have ready to be upgraded and the overall stats practically yield the same numbers, then you should consider the stats boosted specifically. Each separate stat can be considered to be of equal value, leading to a higher overall stat being better but considering your unique preferences, play style, and character choice, you can choose to consider one or a couple of the stats more significant than the others.
5. Accomplish Missions For Extra Rewards
Engaging in matches for a fair chance to double the amount of gold you invested, along with obtaining a pack of cards and some leader points, make Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash engaging enough for you to remain active. Although opening packs can take some time and you will also have an almost equal chance of losing matches, remaining active enough ensures that you will always be progressing in your virtual tennis career.
In addition to the outright rewards you can gain from partaking in matches, Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash also provides additional incentives for player activity and the bulk of this can be earned via the missions feature. You can access the missions menu through its icon on the left side of the home screen and missions are divided between Daily Missions and Point Missions.
Daily missions provide you with a set of targets you can accomplish within the day. Each objective you clear earns you gold or other rewards along with stars. Stars then accumulate to earn you a Mission Pack, which holds 4 cards as well as some bits of gold. Although daily mission targets almost always relate to the usual activities you engage in as you progress in Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash, there are instances when you will encounter a feat that is impossible for you to accomplish in your present situation.
In such cases, you can always choose to have an objective replaced with another one, by clicking on the refresh icon beside it. You can only do this once a day for free as the succeeding ones will cost 5 gems, making it unwise to do so.
Point Missions, on the other hand, work much like achievements in other games, where rewards can be earned following a milestone you reach. Compared to Daily Missions, Point Mission targets can take some time to accomplish but every target reached earns you card packs as well.
6. Take Advantage Of Ad Boosts
Most free-to-play games on mobile are expected to have their share of ads. For some players, the presence of ads in any form, most especially video ads that pop up while you are playing, can be an annoying experience. Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash is a type of game that does not have ads popping up without your consent. However, there are plenty of ads you can play that come with their own set of benefits and, for the most part, you would wish there were more than what is currently available, especially if you want to progress at a much faster rate.
With even the most basic packs taking as much as 3 hours to open after you initiate unlocking them, one of the most useful ad boosts appears on the unlocking card pack. Playing a 15 to 30-second ad here will cut down the waiting time a 1 hour so the time spent playing the video ad certainly makes it worth the payout.
The shop holds plenty of freebies that you should choose to take advantage of as well. To start, there is an Ads Pack that gives you a free pack of cards for every 8 video ads you watch. This includes ads you watch from the shop itself as well as all other ads within the game. Besides the Ads Pack are free prizes to earn for every watch you ad. It is always a set of gold x 100, gold x 300, a tier 1 card pack, and 3 gems. Be sure to scroll through the shop as there are also free rewards to earn that do not involve having to watch an ad.
Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash certainly holds a lot more features and surprises in store for its players but for now, this is where we wrap up our Mini Tennis: Perfect Smash Guide. We are confident that the simple tips and strategies we shared will prove instrumental to helping you climb up the leagues and dominate every tennis court but if you have stumbled upon some neat tricks and strategies other than the ones we shared, we would appreciate hearing about them from you!