Crush the Castle

Crush the Castle is a physics-based demolition puzzle in which the player uses a catapult to aim at walls, towers, and their occupants, trying to bring them down in as few attempts as possible. Each projectile has a different weight and behavior - from a plain rock to explosive payloads - and the key to success is judging the angle and force of the shot, as well as taking advantage of the physics of falling beams and stones, which can finish off on their own what the catapult missed. The controls are simple, a mouse drag determines force and direction, yet the game offers surprisingly deep strategy in deciding where and with what to aim first. As the levels progress, sturdier materials and defensive elements appear on the castle's side, so the player has to combine projectile types and think through the order of hits instead of just firing at random.

The graphics are drawn, with a cartoonish touch and a visible physics simulation that was fairly computationally demanding for the Flash scene in 2009 and, at the same time, very addictive - watching structures collapse realistically, piece by piece, was one of the game's main draws. It's precisely because of this that Crush the Castle is often mentioned as one of the titles that foreshadowed the boom of physics-based destruction games. Layers of wood and stone collapse according to the actual weight and balance of the structure, so no two demolished towers look quite the same.

The game was published by studio Armor Games, and among players and journalists it's still passed down as one of the conceptual predecessors of the much more famous Angry Birds, even though it was an independently developed idea in the same genre of physics-based destruction. In the history of web games, Crush the Castle thus remains an example of how a simple physics engine managed to keep millions of players occupied in the browser for years. A number of further installments in the series then expanded the principle with new environments and projectile types, but the basic charm of physical destruction stayed the same.

Why play it: Fans of physics-based demolition and catapult puzzles will find in this game one of the genre's forerunners to the much bigger hits that followed.