Solar Smash

A destruction sandbox at planetary scale. There is a planet on screen, a list of weapons — asteroids, beams, missiles, stranger things — and no objective whatsoever; you select something, aim it at the surface, and watch what the simulation does with the consequences. The reason it holds attention is the aftermath. Impacts leave craters that persist, cracks propagate across the surface, fragments enter orbit and come back down, and a planet hit repeatedly in the same place behaves differently from one hit evenly — so experimenting has results worth watching rather than a single explosion animation. Different planet types respond differently, which gives the weapons list something to be tested against. There is no progression, no score and nothing to unlock through skill, which makes it an open-ended toy rather than a game. Sessions are a few minutes unless curiosity extends them. It needs a moderately capable machine for the surface simulation, plays entirely with a mouse or touch, and runs in the browser without a download. Calm, oddly meditative, and completely without purpose. It is also one of the few games of its kind that works well on a phone, because nothing in it needs precision — a tap and a drag are the entire interface, and the simulation does the rest while you watch.