Classic brick breaker: bounce the ball off your paddle and clear every brick. Eight levels, three lives, mouse, keyboard or touch.
What is Brick Breaker?
Brick Breaker is an arcade game in which you move a paddle along the bottom of the screen and bounce a ball up into a wall of bricks until every brick is gone. Each brick breaks when the ball touches it, and the ball must never get past your paddle. It is one of the oldest video game ideas still played today, and a single level takes a few minutes.
Our Brick Breaker keeps the classic rules. There are no power-ups, no extra balls and no bricks that need several hits. What decides a level is how well you control the angle of the ball and how you handle its speed, which rises with every brick you break.
How to play Brick Breaker
The court has walls on the left, right and top. The ball bounces off all three and off your paddle. If it drops below the paddle you lose a life, the ball returns to the paddle and a short ready, set, go countdown starts. You can skip the countdown and launch at once with Space, Enter or a tap.
The bounce off the paddle depends on where the ball lands on it. A hit in the exact centre sends the ball straight up. The further from the centre it lands, the more sideways the ball travels, so the ends of the paddle give the flattest angles. The direction your paddle is moving at the moment of contact makes no difference; only the contact point counts.
Bricks come in rows and in different lengths. Points depend on height: a brick in the top row of the court is worth 125 points, and each row further down is worth 5 points less. Every brick you break also makes the ball a little faster. The speed gains get smaller as the ball approaches its limit of one and a half times the starting speed, and the ball goes back to its starting speed when you lose a life or start a new level.
You start with three lives. Clearing a level gives you one more, up to a maximum of five. When the last life is gone the game ends and your score is compared with your best.
Brick Breaker tips and strategy
Aim with the paddle. Treat the paddle as a steering tool. To send the ball left, let it land on the left half; to send it right, use the right half. Move into position early so you can choose the contact point. A last-moment lunge leaves the angle to chance.
Open a tunnel to the top. The best scoring move in any brick breaker game is to break a gap through the bricks, usually near a side wall, and get the ball above them. Up there it bounces between the top wall and the upper rows, breaking the bricks that are worth the most points while you wait below.
Use the mouse or touch when the ball is fast. With the arrow keys or A and D the paddle moves at a fixed speed, and a late ball can outrun it. With the mouse or a finger the paddle jumps straight to the pointer, which makes late saves much easier.
Plan for the last bricks. The ball is at its fastest at the end of a level, just when only a few scattered bricks are left. Use flat angles from the paddle ends to reach bricks near the side walls, and steep shots from the centre to reach a brick directly above you.
Play safe after losing a life. Speed resets when you lose a ball, so the next few rallies are slower. Use them to open a tunnel to the top while the ball is still easy to follow.
Levels and starting options
The game has eight levels with different brick layouts and colour sets. On the menu you can pick the level you want to start from with the arrow buttons, and the game remembers your choice for next time. That makes it easy to practise one layout that keeps beating you.
Clearing a level takes you to the next one, with your score and lives carried over. After the eighth level the game goes back to the first, so a long run can loop through all eight layouts while your score keeps growing. Other brick breaker games add power-ups, moving bricks or multi-ball; ours keeps to the original formula.
Where brick breaker games come from
The brick breaking idea comes from a 1976 Atari arcade game. It was conceived by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow as a single-player follow-up to video table tennis, and Steve Wozniak worked on the hardware with Steve Jobs. The game was a hit and the idea spread to home consoles and computers.
In the 1980s arcade makers added power-ups, bricks that take several hits and enemies, and the genre has had new versions on every platform since. Our game is built on an open-source JavaScript version written by Jake Gordon and released under the MIT license, rewritten for Hevagames with new drawing, touch controls and one level of our own.
Play Brick Breaker free on Hevagames
Brick Breaker runs in your browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to download or install. On a computer you play with the mouse or the keyboard; on a phone you drag on the board to move the paddle and tap to launch. On tall phone screens the court grows taller to use the extra space.
You can pause with P, Esc or the pause button, and start a new game at any time. Your best score and your chosen starting level are saved on your device. The game is silent, so you can play it anywhere, and it follows the light or dark theme of the site.
How to play
- 1Pick a level on the menu and press Play.
- 2The ball launches after a short ready, set, go countdown, or straight away when you press Space or tap.
- 3Move the paddle to keep the ball in play. Where the ball hits the paddle sets the angle it flies off at.
- 4Each brick you break scores points (higher rows are worth more) and makes the ball a little faster.
- 5Clear all bricks to reach the next level and earn an extra life (up to 5). Missing the ball costs a life; with none left the game is over.
Controls
Tips
- Hit the ball with the edge of the paddle to send it out at a steep angle.
- Getting the ball above the bricks lets it break several in a row.
- The ball speeds up with every brick, so the last bricks of a level come fast.
