Marbles: a close look, tips and whether it is worth your time

If you enjoy short sessions that are hard to walk away from, give this one a look. Below is everything you need before the first launch: the gist, the controls and some working techniques.

What this game is

Marbles (Шары) is a browser physics line-defense: a tide of hundreds marches down a long sheet of ice, and you hold three living marbles. Pull one back and let go — it rolls, crushes whatever it runs over, bounces off the big ones, and wherever it stops it plants and fights on its own until it melts. Clip your own marbles on the way and they go flying — a cascade of loose marbles mows down whole formations. All the art is drawn procedurally and the sound is synthesized through Web Audio — not a single downloaded file.

How to play, in short

1. Marbles (Шары) is a browser physics line-defense: a tide of hundreds marches down a long sheet of ice, and you hold three living marbles.

2. Pull one back and let go — it rolls, crushes whatever it runs over, bounces off the big ones, and wherever it stops it plants and fights on its own until it melts.

3. Clip your own marbles on the way and they go flying — a cascade of loose marbles mows down whole formations.

4. All the art is drawn procedurally and the sound is synthesized through Web Audio — not a single downloaded file.

A few final tips

• Check out the demo mode on the game page — the AI shows how it is played, and repeating it yourself gets much easier.
• Play in short sessions: the best results come with a warmed-up head.

A perfect way to kill ten minutes — and suddenly an hour is gone. Ready to try? "Marbles"