Hold the button, the mouse or your finger to smash the ball down through the spinning rings, and let go to make it bounce in place. That is the only control. On a desktop Space, Enter or the down arrow work too, and P pauses.

If you are holding when the ball lands on black, it breaks and the level is lost - unless you are on fire. If you have let go, the ball simply bounces on black, so releasing before a black slice turns under you is always safe. This holds from the very first level.

Break rings one after another without letting go. Every ring heats the ball; when the heat bar around it is full the ball is ON FIRE for a couple of seconds and breaks black slices too. Letting go cools it down again.

Under the last ring is a well of ten floors from ×1 to ×10. The hotter the ball is when it reaches the bottom, the deeper it falls, and the coins you broke in that level are multiplied by the floor it lands on. Arriving on fire always lands on ×10.

A cleared level gives one star, two if the ball lands on ×5 or deeper in the well, and three on ×10. The grid button in the top-left corner opens the level map: four worlds of twenty-five levels, your stars on each, and every level you have reached open to replay. After level 100 the map unlocks endless towers.

New balls in the shop - ten looks from Bubblegum to the colour-cycling Prism. They are cosmetic only: every ball plays exactly the same. Open the shop from the end-of-level card or from the Main menu, tap a ball to preview it, and buy it once you have enough coins.

You keep the coins you broke. Retry starts the same tower again, so you can learn where the black is. An optional short video revives you once per level at the ring where you fell.

No. Smash Tower runs directly in the browser on phones and desktops - no download, no plugin, no account. It is free; the optional short videos give one revive per level or double a level's coins, and nothing is ever bought with real money. Your progress stays on your own device.