ArcadeWhale
Going Balls is one of the best known ball games on phones. Supersonic Studios released it in 2020, and the idea fits in one sentence: you guide a rolling ball along a track high in the sky and try to reach the finish without falling off. It has well over 400,000 ratings on the App Store, so a lot of people know exactly what it feels like.
It is also a big app. On iPhone the App Store lists it at about 537 MB, which is a lot to ask from a phone that is already full, and it is no help on a school Chromebook that can’t install apps at all. That is where browser games come in. We don’t have a copy of Going Balls, and Skyroll is not the official game. What we have are four games that share its best parts: a ball, a narrow course and the urge to try one more time. All four open in a normal browser tab. Here is the closest one, in a short clip from our channel:
Try it: how fast can you take the bend?
In most ball rolling games, the thing that sends a ball over the edge is not a hammer. It is a turn taken too fast. A heavy ball keeps its speed, and the road can only pull it around a bend so hard. Pick a speed and roll the ball into the corner below.
Will the ball make the turn?
Pick a speed and press Roll the ball.
A simple model: the road can only pull the ball sideways so hard, so above a certain speed the ball slides to the outside of the turn. Slowing down first takes about a quarter off your speed before the bend. Your last three rolls stay on the road as lines, green if the ball made it and red if it fell, so you can see how far each speed pushed it toward the edge.
On our model road the limit sits at a medium speed. Rolling flat out, the ball always slides off, but slow down before the turn and you can arrive faster and still make it. Real games add hammers and gaps on top, yet the rule is the same: brake on the straight, not in the bend.
1. Skyroll: the closest one
Skyroll is a 3D ball rolling game set on narrow roads that float high above a sea of clouds, which is about as close to the Going Balls feeling as we get. There is no auto run. The ball only moves when you push it: drag anywhere on the screen and it rolls the way you drag, and the farther you drag, the faster it goes. On a keyboard, W, A, S and D or the arrow keys do the same. The ball has real weight, so it keeps rolling after you let go and needs a little room to stop, but its grip holds your line when you stop steering. The camera rides close behind the ball and turns with the road a moment before you do, so the next bend is always in view.
Each level is one course built from short sections that get harder as you go: wide roads first, then narrow bridges, ramps you have to hit fast enough to clear a gap, sweeper bars, big swinging hammers, side pushers, crumbling tiles, ice and moving platforms. The road changes shape as well, with S-bends, hills, ledges that drop you onto a lower platform, zigzag bridges and rows of crates that burst as you roll through. Falling is part of it. Roll under a yellow flag arch and it turns green, and if you fall you pop back at the last flag straight away.
The finish is where Skyroll does its own thing. A wall of wooden crates blocks the road, and how fast you hit it decides your coins: arrive slowly for up to a two times bonus, or come in at full speed and blow the whole wall apart for up to five times. Coins buy new balls, ten in all, and the world changes every ten levels, from Meadow Sky and Sunset Bay to Candy Clouds, Frost Peaks, Neon Night and Ember Isles.
2. Tiltway: tilt the ramp, not the ball
Tiltway keeps the ball and the drop but flips the controls. You never steer the ball. Hold left or right and the whole wooden marble run leans, so the ball rolls to the low side, and so do the loose rocks, which react faster than you do. A good lean sweeps a rock off the edge before it reaches you. A bad one sweeps it straight into your path.
It is an endless run rather than a set of levels. The ramp teaches itself by distance: rails at first, then rocks, hop bars at 150 m, gaps at 300 m, missing planks at 500 m, slippery glass, forks, fans, seesaws and finally a ramp hanging from chains. Your first three minutes are a practice band where a fall just puts you back on the last checkpoint. After that one fall ends the run, and your best distance goes on the weekly leaderboard.
3. Smash Tower: a ball going down instead of forward
If what you like about Going Balls is the one-finger control, Smash Tower boils it down even further. A ball bounces on top of a tall spinning tower of coloured rings. Hold to smash straight down through them, let go to bounce in place. Black slices are the one rule: smash into black while holding and the ball breaks.
Break rings without stopping and the ball heats up until it catches fire, and a burning ball smashes through black too. At the bottom waits a well of ten floors from ×1 to ×10, and how deep you land depends on how hot you still are, so the end of every level is a small bet between playing safe and keeping the streak going. There are 100 levels and ten balls to buy with the coins you break loose.
4. Splash Rush: race down the course instead of rolling it
Splash Rush swaps the ball for a swim ring and the sky road for a giant water slide, but the core is the same: a winding course, a drop on both sides and one finger to steer. Sixteen riders start each cup, the first ten into the pool go through, then six, and the top three of the final win. You don’t press anything to go, because the water carries you. Drag left and right to ride up the curved walls.
The trick that wins rounds is flying. In a tight bend, steer hard to the outside where yellow arrows glow, go over the rim and you launch into the air, then aim for the slide further down and land on it. One good flight can skip a whole loop and take you from the back of the pack into the spots. From the second cup you race real players online.
How to keep the ball on the road
- Brake on the straight. As the demo shows, the turn decides it. Ease off before the bend and speed up again once the road straightens.
- Watch the rhythm, not the ball. Hammers, sweepers and pushers move on a beat. Wait one swing, then go through behind it.
- Take risks right after a checkpoint. In Skyroll a fall sends you back to the last flag you passed, so the stretch just after a flag is the cheapest place to try a faster line.
- Save your speed for the end. In Skyroll the crate wall pays up to five times your coins at full speed, and in Smash Tower a hot streak lands you deeper in the well. The last few seconds are where the coins are.
More games where a ball is the hero, from mini golf to pool, are on the Ball Games page. If you play at school, our list of games for a Chromebook has quiet, trackpad-friendly picks, and fans of endless ramps should try the games like Slope.
