Playing games is fun, but building games is funnier. I really love to get immersed in this process, and now, since my other apps are starting to do relatively well, I can also find the time for this. Introducing Pane Shatter, a small anti-stress, glass breaker iOS game.

The game proposition is simple, and at the same time really compelling. You get a small steel ball that you can slingshot towards… Well, towards anywhere, and that’s the game. The more you pull, the more tension you create, the higher the speed of the ball, which hits the edges of the phone screen, and “breaks” them. You also get a tiny haptic feedback, so it really feels like something is moving inside the phone.

The slingshot was only the first level. though. After playing for a while, both solo and with my 2 years old son, I decided to add 2 more ways to launch. The first one is shaking, the second one is blowing. The shaking means you get to move the phone in a way that makes the ball swing and a new breaking pattern emerges. The blowing means you can actually “move” the ball by blowing into the phone microphone, while holding it horizontally.

Now, what happens after the ball hits the edges? Well, there is a gravity engine built in, that makes the ball lose velocity and also pulls it towards the bottom edge. The breaking goes on for a while, but eventually the gravity wins and the ball settles at the bottom. The whole “broken” screen stays still for a second, then the entire image is breaking like a window, all the debris accumulating at the bottom again. And then you start over.

A couple of nice additions, for the premium level: you can also choose to break the ball on the first impact into up to 5 smaller balls. So you get not one, but up to five tiny steel balls rolling around and breaking the phone screen. You can also choose different colors, and that makes for a really nice visual experience.

The broken glass image is saved on your device, so you can share it and brag about it to your friends.

That’s the game. I know it sounds simple, and it’s intently so. But the actual experience of playing it is surprisingly nice (and somehow addictive, at least that’s what my son seems to think). Go try it out now for free in the app store:

Pane Shatter

And if you want to know more about it, like what’s included in free, what you get in premium, as wells as more screenshots, you can do so from the pane shatter page.