Two competitors. Two sticks. One puck.

An ice hockey face-off?

Nope. It’s Nok Hockey.

Usually, when I first tell people about this game of kings, played on a balsa wood board measuring only three feet by two feet, the reaction is the same: “Rahul, what the hell are you talking about?”

Nok Hockey is only the coolest table-top game ever invented that doesn’t involve drinking. It’s only the best game that is both physical and playable indoors. And best of all, Nok Hockey is the only uniquely funky game available for under $30.

Taking all of that into account, it’s clear why I didn’t have to think twice when I forked over the cash to bring the joys of Nok Hockey to my humble New Quincy estate a few months ago. I wanted to bring something cheap and useful to the room. It was either Nok Hockey or a foot washer.

All my roommates—Phil, Marc and the two Matts (I want their names in print so they never forget)—hadn’t the foggiest idea of what I was purchasing when I excitedly recounted the virtues of the game. They thought I had gone off my rocker, that Nok Hockey was just another crazy idea, like all my previous crazy ideas.

Then it arrived, in an anonymous UPS box. I brought it to the room, set the board on the table, unpackaged the plastic sticks and the small wooden pucks, and a dorm room legend was born.

The rule of the game is simple: hit the puck into your opponent’s goal. The board has only two small slits as “goals,” and various other obstacles—such as diagonal corners and wooden blocks directly in front of the goal so that scoring is not easy. But there’s no defense. Shots are exchanged in turn. If you hit a bad shot and leave your opponent with an easy opportunity in your end, tough luck. Start the puck in the middle circle, and first person to five goals wins.

Since the board is only six square feet, Nok Hockey ensures that the competitors are close to each other, literally face-to-face. Spectators can crowd around or mill about. Unlike air hockey, there are no plugs or anything, so the game’s portable.

Games are intense. The smallest mistake can lose the contest for you. And since most of us had little or no prior experience with Nok Hockey, the equal footing reinvigorated our competitive fires and built up more room camaraderie than anything that doesn’t involve alcohol.

Nok Hockey spread beyond our room, as blockmates and neighbors wanted to know what all that noise was (someone thought we were “shooting small animals”). The constant clatter of plastic sticks on wood and our own cursing often carries on into the wee hours of the morning. I even brought Nok Hockey to the Crimson one night.

To truly understand Nok Hockey, you have to appreciate the culture where it was born. When I was younger, my siblings and I used to go to the community pool down the street from our home in Pennsylvania. All the kids from the area were there, and pretty soon swimming turned into roughhousing. After a while, just to rest up, some of us kids would go to the pool grill for munchies.

But after you ordered your burger, fries or mozzarella sticks, you had to wait for it to be prepared. Cold, wet 12-year-olds hate to just sit and hang around—we had to do something. The pool manager had bought a Nok Hockey table one summer and just left it at the grill. So, we would play until our food was ready or until the game turned violent, which wasn’t rare.

Fast forward to 2001. A fierce Nok Hockey battle raged between two roommates and friends, Marc and Matt. Since Marc had beaten several of us in a row, the rest of the room pulled for Matt. It was a best of three, and Marc had struck first.

But Matt stormed back, and pretty soon Marc was getting pissed off. When Matt finally finished his comeback, Marc, in a fit of pent-up anger, overturned both the table and the Nok Hockey board. Then he grabbed me, since I was the nearest human around, and proceeded to pummel me. He smashed my face into the wall, making my mouth bleed, until I was face down in a small pool of blood on my bed.

It was the greatest moment in Nok Hockey history. My wounds soon healed. But the legacy of the game—which hopefully will be passed down for the generations of Harvardians to come—is forever etched in our collective memory.