Box Smasher

About the game

Every level is a pile of colourful boxes standing on a platform, and you have only a few balls to clear it. A level is done when the last box has been knocked off the screen, and the fewer balls you spend, the better the result on the "Level Complete" screen.

The game is all about aiming a physics simulation. The boxes are light, they tumble, slide and drag each other along, and a ball that grazes the top of a tower can do more than one that hits it dead on. There are 24 levels, starting with a single tidy stack and moving on to platforms, gaps and towers that need a plan, and each new level is unlocked by finishing the one before it.

Box Smasher began as a school assignment by ROllerozxa and was later turned into a complete free game. It is a small, fast and cheerful one: a level takes a minute, and restarting is one click.

Playing it here

Click Play and choose level 1 on the level screen. Your progress (the levels you have unlocked, the settings and the statistics screen) is saved in this browser and kept when you close the tab, so you can come back to the same level. It is not shared between browsers or devices, and clearing the site's data erases it.

The game runs in the LÖVE game framework, compiled to WebAssembly. We removed the "Visit the website" button from the About screen, since the games here do not open other pages.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Pull back, don't push. The ball flies in the opposite direction of your drag, like a slingshot, and the further you pull, the harder it goes. The red arrow is the throw: use it to line up the shot before you let go.

Aim for the base or the middle. Hitting the top of a tower often only knocks off the top boxes. A hard shot into the middle of the stack can send many boxes flying at once, and they knock out others on their way down.

Spend the last ball carefully. When you run out of balls with boxes left, a Restart button appears. Rerunning a level is free, so use the first throws to learn how the pile reacts.

Frequently asked questions

Is my progress saved? Yes, in this browser, within a few seconds of each change. It does not follow you to another browser or device.

Does it work on a phone? The game was made for the mouse. We have only tested it with a mouse and keyboard.

Is it free? Yes: Box Smasher is free software under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later, and the source code of this build is available from this page.

Credits and licence

Box Smasher was made by ROllerozxa; the code and the pictures are by the author. It uses the undefined medium font by Andi Rueckel (SIL Open Font License), five sound effects released into the public domain (CC0) by KorgMS2000B, ConarB13, rddrus, Kagateni and moogy73 on Freesound, and the small libraries json.lua (rxi) and Breezefield (Hugo Dictus), both MIT. The game is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later; the build served here changes only two things (the web link is gone, and the save is written without a background thread), and its complete source code and the patches are hosted alongside the game. The licence texts are linked from this page.