Free Browser Games Like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and Where’s My Water?

If you liked Angry Birds, Cut the Rope or Where’s My Water? and want something similar that runs in a browser tab for free, here are five, one for each of the classic physics-puzzle mechanics: Vault Smash is the cannon-and-knock-down game, Loot Drop is the rope cutter, Bath Time is dig-and-water, Van Stacker is crane stacking and Smash & Grab is tap-to-throw at a stack of cans. Each has 30 levels, no ads, nothing to buy and no sign-up, and all five are on our physics games page.

Five mechanics cover almost every physics puzzle on a phone

Strip the characters off the physics puzzles of the early smartphone years and you find a handful of verbs. You launch something at a structure. You cut something loose and let gravity swing it. You change the ground so a liquid finds its own way. You drop something from a moving height and hope it stays put. You throw something at a pile and count what falls. Every game below is built on exactly one of those verbs, which makes it easy to pick by what you enjoyed.

Vault Smash is the closest thing to Angry Birds in a browser

Angry Birds made the pull-back-and-release shot famous: drag a slingshot, let go, and watch a structure of wood, glass and stone come apart around the pigs hiding in it. Vault Smash keeps the gesture and swaps the targets. You drag back anywhere on a gallery and a cannon fires the opposite way, harder the further you pulled. The goal is to knock every piece of loot on display below a gold rail that runs along the wall, before the balls run out.

The equivalent of the different birds is the ammunition. A tennis ball is light and bouncy, a bowling ball flies a shorter arc but shoves stone blocks, and a rubber ball bounces off nearly everything, which is what you want for a shot off a steel wall. The level decides which comes next, so you plan around the queue rather than choose. Stars come from using fewer shots, which rewards the one clever ricochet over three brute-force ones.

The limitation: it is 30 levels and no more, and there are no special powers to trigger mid-flight. If what you loved about Angry Birds was tapping the yellow bird to make it accelerate, that is not here.

Loot Drop is a rope cutter with a diamond instead of a sweet

Cut the Rope is about timing: a sweet hangs from several ropes, you cut them in the right order so it swings into the mouth of a small green creature, and three stars float in the air along the way. Loot Drop is in the same family. A stolen diamond hangs from ropes above a getaway van, you swipe across a rope to cut it, and tap balloons, crates and bellows to use them. Land the diamond in Sir Wagsworth’s paws on the van roof and the level is cleared. Touch a laser, hit the road or leave the screen and it restarts.

Each level has three coins, and every coin the diamond passes through is a star. Every level also ships with a recorded three-coin solution that a script replays through the game’s own physics before the level goes live, so a three-star route always exists even when it does not feel like it.

The limitation: there is no hint button. If a level beats you, the only help is to try a different cutting order, which is part of the fun until about the twentieth attempt.

Bath Time is a dig-and-water puzzle with a corgi in the tub

Where’s My Water? had you dig through dirt with a finger so water could run down to an alligator’s shower, filling three rubber ducks on the way. Bath Time is the same kind of puzzle with the roles changed: the bath belongs to Sir Wagsworth, our corgi, and the water starts in pockets underground. Drag through the brown dirt, leave room for the water to run downhill, and fill the meter at the top. Three ducks are buried in each level; water that flows over a duck fills it, and each full duck is a star.

Later levels bring the complications the genre is known for. Purple poison turns clean water into more poison, green ooze eats dirt on its own and cancels water out, levers open grates elsewhere when water runs over them, and pipes carry whatever falls in to somewhere else. The water is simulated as particles rather than drawn as an animation, so it splits, pools and spills the way you would expect.

The limitation: a mistake can quietly ruin a level. Water that settles below the lever it needed to reach will never get back up, and the game cannot tell you that until the meter stalls, so you learn to restart early.

Van Stacker turns crane-drop stacking into a getaway

Stacking games where a crane swings a load and you choose the moment to let go have been around since the phones with keypads, Tower Bloxx being the one most people remember. Van Stacker puts the crane above an open-top getaway van. A trolley carries each piece of loot back and forth, you tap, click or press space to drop it, and everything has to land in the van and stay there. If any of it touches the road, you go again.

The physics detail that matters is that a dropped piece keeps the trolley’s speed. Let go mid-pass and it travels forward as it falls, so you release a little early, or wait for the end of a pass where the trolley slows to turn. Stars come from perfect drops, the ones that land close to the gold centre line on the van’s back wall.

The limitation: it is the least puzzly of the five. Most levels are about timing and steady nerves rather than working something out, so if you came for Cut the Rope-style head-scratching, start with Loot Drop instead.

Smash & Grab is the fairground can stall in 3D

The oldest mechanic here is not from a phone at all: throw a ball at a pyramid of tins and count what falls. Smash & Grab builds it in 3D on a market stall. Tap anywhere and Sir Wagsworth throws a ball at that exact spot. Tins, crates, bricks and gold bars have to leave the table, glass jars count once they shatter, and the occasional stick of TNT clears whatever it throws off with it. Stars come from the balls you have left over.

The ball hits the first thing under your finger, so a crate in front will take a shot meant for the tin behind it. Aiming low on a stack rather than at the top is the habit that separates one-star clears from three-star ones, the same as at a real fair.

The limitation: being 3D, it has more to download than the other four before the first throw, so the first visit is slower to start, especially on a weak connection.

Picking one

• You liked lining up the perfect slingshot shot: Vault Smash.
• You liked working out the order of things: Loot Drop, then Bath Time.
• You liked watching water find its way: Bath Time.
• You want something for five minutes with one thumb: Van Stacker or Smash & Grab.
• You want hundreds of levels, not thirty: none of these yet. The mobile originals and their sequels have far more content, and that is the fair reason to pick one of them over ours.

All five run on phones, tablets and computers, save your stars in the browser, and are free in the plain sense: no ads, no coins, no account. Pick the verb you missed and start on the physics games page.