Cut the Rope: How a Hungry Green Monster Became Mobile Gaming's Cutest Star

A piece of candy dangles from three ropes. Below, a small green monster stares up at it, mouth open, tiny feet tapping. You swipe one rope, then another, the candy swings, catches a bubble, floats past a spike, and drops straight into the monster's mouth. It chomps happily. Three stars.

That's Cut the Rope, a physics puzzle released on 4 October 2010 by ZeptoLab and published by Chillingo, the same London label that helped launch Angry Birds. It holds a 93 score on Metacritic, among the highest for any mobile game, and by 2018 the series had passed one billion downloads.

Two brothers and a candy

ZeptoLab was founded in 2010 by brothers Semyon and Efim Voinov. Cut the Rope was their breakthrough: a game where every level is a small machine made of ropes, bubbles, air cushions, spikes and stars, and your job is to work out the order in which to cut.

The rules are explained in seconds, but the puzzles get fiendish. Each level has three stars to collect on the way to the monster's mouth, so a solution that merely works isn't the same as a perfect one. That gave the game two layers: casual players could enjoy the story, and perfectionists could spend hours chasing three stars everywhere.

Om Nom, the real star

The secret weapon was the monster. Om Nom, named after the sound of happy eating, is small, round and entirely driven by his love of candy. He reacts to everything: he gets excited when the candy swings close, looks sad when it falls off screen, and celebrates when he finally eats.

Players loved him. Om Nom moved off the puzzle board and into an animated web series, Om Nom Stories, on ZeptoLab's YouTube channel and children's streaming services, along with comics, toys and even a McDonald's Happy Meal promotion in Europe in 2014.

A long run of sequels

ZeptoLab kept the candy coming:

• Cut the Rope: Experiments (August 2011) added a mad scientist and new tools.
• Cut the Rope: Time Travel (April 2013) sent Om Nom back through history to meet his ancestors.
• Cut the Rope 2 (December 2013) let Om Nom leave his box and move around levels with help from new friends.
• Cut the Rope: Magic (December 2015) turned him into different creatures.
• Spin-offs followed, from the virtual pet My Om Nom (2014) to the endless runner Om Nom: Run (2020).

Recent years brought the series to subscription services. Cut the Rope Remastered came to Apple Arcade in April 2021, Cut the Rope Daily arrived on Netflix's games app in August 2023, and Cut the Rope 3 launched on Apple Arcade in October 2023, later adding augmented reality for Apple Vision Pro in February 2024.

Why it matters

Cut the Rope was one of the games that proved a touchscreen puzzle could be as clever as any on a console. Its physics, its tactile swipe-to-cut action and its expressive mascot showed the industry that charm and craft could compete with spectacle. It also gave mobile gaming one of its few true characters: Om Nom is as recognisable to many children as any console hero.

Where to play

Cut the Rope and its sequels remain on iOS and Android, with more entries on Apple Arcade and Netflix's games app. For the other great physics game of the era, read our Angry Birds history, and for puzzles of a quieter kind, our Monument Valley feature.