Brick Smash

About Brick Smash

Brick Smash is the paddle-and-ball game where every bounce counts. Keep the ball in play with your paddle, knock out every brick to clear the level, and work your way through 20 hand-made levels shaped like a heart, a space invader, a smiley, a rocket, a castle and more. Catch the power-ups that tumble out of broken bricks, and build combos by breaking brick after brick before the ball comes back down.

Also called: brick breaker, breakout style game, ball and paddle.

How to play Brick Smash

1. The ball starts resting on your paddle. A dashed line shows which way it will go. Click, tap or press Space to launch it.
2. Move the paddle with the mouse (it follows your pointer), the arrow keys or A and D. On a phone, put a finger anywhere on the board and drag: the paddle moves as far as your finger does, so your thumb never hides it.
3. Bounce the ball into the bricks to break them. Break every brick you can to clear the level; the grey steel bricks don't count.
4. Don't let the ball fall past your paddle. You have 3 lives, shown as hearts in the top corner. Lose the last one and the game is over.
5. When a level is cleared you see your score and bonus, then the next level starts by itself (or press the button, or Space, to go straight on).
6. Press Esc or the pause button to pause. The game also pauses by itself if you switch tabs.

Rules

• Where the ball meets the paddle sets its angle: the middle sends it almost straight up, the ends send it off steeply to that side. The paddle never sends a ball perfectly straight up or flat sideways.
• Plain bricks break in one hit. Bricks with studs take one hit per stud: they crack as they are hit, then pop. The cream brick with three studs takes three hits.
• Steel bricks never break; the ball bounces off them. Every level can still be cleared: there is always a way round or through the steel.
• Some broken bricks drop a capsule. Catch it with the paddle to use it: wide paddle (blue, about 16 seconds), multi-ball (purple, splits the ball into three), slow ball (mint, about 10 seconds), sticky paddle (green, catches the ball so you can aim it, about 14 seconds) and extra life (red heart, up to 5 lives). Running power-ups show a draining timer in the top-left corner.
• With a sticky paddle, a caught ball rides along until you launch it, or flies off by itself after 3 seconds.
• With several balls in play you only lose a life when the last one falls.
• The ball speeds up a little the longer it stays in play, and each level starts a touch faster than the one before. Losing a life resets the speed-up and ends any power-ups.
• Clearing level 20 finishes the game, and your final score goes on your record. Start again from level 1 to beat it.
• Scoring: 10 points per hit a brick needed when it breaks (10, 20 or 30), 5 for cracking a tough brick, and a combo bonus of 5 more for each brick in a row since the ball last touched the paddle (up to +50). Catching a power-up is 50. Clearing a level adds 250, plus 50 per level number and 100 for every life you still have.

Brick Smash tips and strategy

• Aim with the paddle ends. Hitting the ball near an end sends it off at a steep angle, which is how you reach bricks tucked into the corners.
• Get the ball above the bricks. Once it slips through a gap into the space at the top, it bounces between the ceiling and the bricks and breaks a lot of them without you doing a thing. On most levels, open one column early.
• Watch the ball, not the capsule. It is tempting to chase a falling power-up, but a missed ball costs far more than a missed capsule.
• Save the sticky paddle for the last few bricks: catch the ball, slide the paddle under the brick you want, and launch.
• Combos build while the ball is up among the bricks, so a long rally above the bricks scores far more than chipping away one brick at a time.
• The ball gets faster the longer a life lasts. If it starts to feel too quick, a slow-ball capsule is worth moving for.