Smash Tower

Smash Tower is a free one-button tower smasher in the Stack Ball and Helix Jump family: a tall tower of coloured rings spins in front of you, a bright ball bounces on top of it, and the only thing you do is hold or let go. Hold the button, the mouse or your finger and the ball smashes straight down, breaking ring after ring into flying shards. Let go and it bounces in place on the ring below it. Some slices of every ring are black, and black is the one rule: smash into a black slice while you are holding and the ball breaks. Bouncing on black is always safe - so the whole game is reading the spinning tower and letting go at the right moment, then smashing on as soon as the black has turned away.

What Smash Tower adds is the bottom of the tower. Every ring you break without stopping heats the ball up, and a full heat bar sets it ON FIRE for a couple of seconds: a burning ball smashes through black as well, so a good streak lets you burn through the hardest part of a tower. Under the last ring waits a well of ten numbered floors, from ×1 to ×10, and how deep you fall into it depends on how hot you are when you arrive. Reach the bottom cold and you land on ×1; reach it still burning and you crash all the way down to ×10. The coins you broke on the way are multiplied by that number, so the end of every level is a small choice between playing it safe and keeping the streak going.

The towers change as you go, and each new kind asks the same hold-and-release question in a different way. Spiral towers first, with one black block per ring winding around the pole; then twin blocks, swinging rings that turn back and forth, drifting rings that each spin at their own speed, key rings that are almost all black with one bright window, blinking slices that flash black and back, steel rings you cannot break at all and have to wait on until the gap comes round, counter rings where neighbours spin opposite ways, rush stretches that spin twice as fast, and finally mixed towers with every trick at once. Black is deadly from the very first level, so the opening towers keep it to a single slice per ring, with every other ring all colour, while you learn when to let go.

Coins buy new balls, and nothing else. The shop shows all ten - Bubblegum, Mint Drop, Blueberry, Cherry Bomb, Solid Gold, Galaxy, Neon, Ice Crystal, the colour-cycling Prism and the Classic you start with - and each one costs a little more than the last, so a new ball is something you play toward for a few minutes rather than a free gift. The home screen and the end of every level show your next goal in one line: the next ball and how many coins are still to go, and once every ball is yours, the next world. The shop button on the end card fills up as you get closer and glows when the ball is ready, so buying it is a single tap. A ball only changes how the game looks: every ball bounces, smashes and catches fire exactly the same, so the towers are beaten by skill alone. The towers are grouped into worlds of twenty-five levels - Candy Park, Coral Lagoon, Sunset Canyon and Sky Garden - each with its own backdrop, ring shape and colours, and new tower types keep arriving for the first half hour of play. Every cleared level earns one to three stars (land on ×5 or deeper for two, ×10 for three), and the home screen counts every star you have collected. The levels never run out: once the hand-made towers are behind you the worlds come round again with every trick mixed together, so there is always a next level. The home button on the end card takes you to the title screen with the next level ready behind it, the Main menu in the pause menu goes there too, and Play picks up right where you left off. A daily reward adds coins toward the next ball each day you come back, a longer streak gives more, and the bouncy soundtrack can be switched off in the menu.

Everything works with one finger on a phone and with one key on a desktop - Space, Enter or the down arrow, or just hold the mouse - with P to pause. Losing a level is never a wall: the coins you broke are kept, Retry starts the same tower again so you can learn it. Nothing is ever bought with real money, and your level, coins and balls are stored on your own device. If you like Stack Ball, Helix Jump or any one-tap game where timing is everything, this is the one where the finish line is worth racing to.