JezzBall

The goal of JezzBall is to capture at least 75% of the board on each level by building walls — while the balls bounce around and try to stop you.

Click or tap anywhere on the board to start building a wall. The wall grows in two directions at once from the point you clicked, and it becomes solid once both ends reach an edge. Any empty area that gets sealed off with no balls inside is captured and added to your score.

You can switch the direction of your walls between horizontal and vertical — on desktop, simply right-click or use the direction button before you build.

But be careful! If a ball hits your wall while it's still under construction, the unfinished part of the wall is destroyed and you lose a life. Lose all your lives, and it's Game Over.

Timing is everything. Watch the balls closely, learn their bouncing patterns, and start building when they're moving away from your wall. The safest moment to strike is right after a ball bounces off in the other direction.

The real art of JezzBall is trapping balls in small areas. Try to split the balls apart and seal each one into the smallest possible space — the more area you capture beyond 75%, the bigger your bonus!

Capture 75% of the board to complete the level. Each new level adds another ball, making the board more chaotic and the challenge even greater. How far can you get?

Have fun and good luck playing JezzBall!

JezzBall is one of the iconic games of the early Windows era. It was created by Dima Pavlovsky, and Microsoft released it in 1992 as part of the "Microsoft Entertainment Pack" — a legendary collection of casual games for Windows that office workers of the 90s knew all too well. Alongside hits like SkiFree and Chip's Challenge, JezzBall quickly became one of the most played games of its time.

The idea of capturing territory while dodging moving enemies wasn't entirely new. JezzBall's gameplay builds on earlier arcade classics — most notably Taito's "Qix" from 1981, where players claimed portions of the screen while avoiding a wandering enemy, and the 1984 computer game "Xonix", which brought a similar formula to early PCs. JezzBall's brilliant twist was the two-directional growing wall, which turned every click into a heart-pounding race against the bouncing balls.

The balls in JezzBall are officially "atoms" — the original game's help file described them as bouncing atoms that needed to be contained. Whatever you call them, generations of players remember the tension of watching a wall slowly grow while a ball hurtled straight toward it.

Like Solitaire and Minesweeper, JezzBall was a game that millions of people played during their first years with a computer, and it remains a nostalgic favorite to this day.

With JezzBall, you can relive this timeless classic anywhere — no installation needed!