Brick Breaker

How to play Brick Breaker

1. Choose Start playing for the next unplayed round, or Round select to pick any unlocked board. Arcade run and Endless are on the same menu.
2. Slide the paddle to line up the dotted guide, then press Space, click or lift your finger to serve.
3. Keep the paddle under the returning ball. Hit it with the paddle ends for wide angles and with the centre to send it straight up.
4. Break every brick that is not steel. Studs show how many hits a strong brick still needs; put out every lamp before you try to break the gates.
5. Catch capsules when it is safe. During a boss round, watch the health bar at the top and dodge the falling bolts and sparks.
6. Clear the round to see your stars, time and bonuses, then continue to the next board or replay for the stars you missed.

Controls

About Brick Breaker

Brick Breaker is a single-player paddle game with one clear job: keep the ball in play until every breakable brick on the board is gone. The paddle slides along the bottom of the field, the ball rebounds from the walls and the ceiling, and each impact wears a brick down. It is drawn in hard-edged pixel art with a small cabinet score panel, and every board, brick, capsule and boss is original to this game.

The main route is thirty-nine rounds across three worlds. The Jewel Vault teaches the basics with towers, hearts, chevrons and crowns, and ends with the Vault Warden. The Foundry adds riveted steel that never breaks, blast bricks that take their eight neighbours with them and heavy bricks that need four hits, before the Twin Lanterns. The Observatory introduces lamps and gates: gates stay unbreakable until every lamp on the board is out, so the order you clear things in matters. Its final boss is the Clockwork Crown.

Where the ball meets the paddle decides where it goes next. Centre contact sends it almost straight up; contact near an end sends it out at a steep angle, which is how you reach gaps, corners and the last stubborn brick. Before each serve a short dotted guide shows the launch direction, and it follows the way you last moved. Break several bricks before the ball comes back to the paddle and the chain bonus grows, from twenty-five points a brick up to one hundred.

Capsules fall from destroyed bricks, and gold bricks always release one. Wide stretches the paddle, Multiball splits every ball into three up to six at once, Slow calms every ball, Laser adds twin cannons that fire on their own, Catch holds the ball so you can aim the release, Fireball burns straight through bricks, Barrier lays a floor that saves one falling ball and Extra ball adds a life up to five. Timed powers show a draining bar in the score panel. Missing a capsule never costs anything.

Each round awards up to three stars: one for clearing it, one for clearing it without losing a ball and one for beating the par time shown under the board. Stars from different attempts add up, so you can go for a flawless clear and a fast clear separately. Clearing a round unlocks the next one, and Round select lets you replay any unlocked board with three fresh balls. The results screen lists your time, par, best chain, bonuses and the round best.

Arcade run plays all thirty-nine rounds in order with score and lives carried between them and bonus balls at 25,000 points and every 50,000 after. Endless builds a new board every time from a seed, grows denser and faster as you go deeper, adds lamps and gates later on and brings back a boss every fifth board, with a bonus ball for each one beaten. Both keep their own best score on this device.

The presentation stays true to a period arcade cabinet: shaded pixel bricks with visible strength studs and cracks, a bright ball with a short trail, pixel sparks and rings when bricks break, and a crisp pixel font drawn from the Retro collection alphabet. Sound effects are synthesized in the browser and rise in pitch as a chain grows; sound starts off and can be switched on at any time. Reduced-motion settings remove flashes, trails and most particles. Progress, stars and records are stored in this browser only, with no account or online leaderboard.

A few useful tricks

• Save the paddle ends for when you need an angle; centre hits are the safest way to steady a wild rally.
• Aim for gaps beside steel. A ball that slips behind a row can break a dozen bricks before it comes back.
• Set off blast bricks next to heavy blocks to skip three or four hits at once.
• In Observatory rounds, look for the lamps first; a gate that is still barred just bounces the ball back.
• During a boss, move early: the paddle freezes briefly if a bolt hits it, and a frozen paddle cannot reach the ball.

Good questions