Ball games: ricochets, mazes and physics

A ball is about the simplest thing a game can give you, which is exactly why designers can do so much with it. Here it rolls through mazes, bounces off walls, smashes pictures and drops through a basketball hoop. In most of these games physics does the heavy lifting: weight, trajectory and bounce matter more than quick fingers.

In Rolling Maze the balls sit at the bottom of a mug, and the only way to get them out is to keep flipping the mug over. Rotate the Pipe! has you turning the whole level rather than steering the ball, and it plays more like a calm, meditative puzzle than a race. Balls: Pixel Art and Pixel Chaos both ask you to knock a picture apart pixel by pixel; Pixel Chaos gives you 10 attempts, with exploding balls and a rare laser beam to help. Neon Ricochet is an idle arcade game where the ball keeps bouncing off shrinking neon rings and earns coins with every hit. In Project Ball you join the red or green team and throw balls into a basket, and even the strength of your swipe counts.

Good picks for anyone who likes poking at physics at their own pace, or lining up the perfect ricochet. Everything opens right in the browser, no download needed.