Breakout

How to play

A paddle at the bottom, a wall of bricks at the top, and a ball that does exactly one thing: travel in a straight line until something stops it. The angle it leaves your paddle depends on where it hit, which means you are not just catching the ball, you are aiming it.

The ball starts resting on your paddle. Press Space, click, or tap to launch it. From then on it travels in a straight line, bouncing off the side walls and the top edge but never off the bottom. If it reaches the bottom of the screen you lose a life and the ball resets to the paddle.

Every brick you hit disappears and scores points. The higher rows are worth more. Clear all the bricks on the board and the next wave starts with the ball slightly faster.

You start with three lives. Losing all three ends the run. There is no time limit, so the only pressure is the ball getting faster as the wall thins out and the bounces get longer.

Strategy that actually helps

• Aim with the edge of the paddle, not the middle. Hitting the ball with the far left or right third sends it out at a steep angle, which is how you reach the bricks at the ends of each row.
• Keep the ball above the brick line as much as possible. Once it drops below, every hit sends it back up into empty space and you lose the ability to steer.
• Clear a channel up one side rather than chipping evenly across the wall. The ball can then travel up into the top rows and take out several bricks per pass.
• Do not chase the ball across the screen. Move to where it is going to be, not where it is. The paddle is faster than the ball horizontally.
• When only a few bricks are left, slow down. A fast ball with nothing to hit is the most common way to lose the last life on a nearly cleared board.