Brick Breaker

Brick Breaker is a fast, bouncy arcade game. A wall of coloured bricks waits at the top of the screen, a paddle sits at the bottom, and a single ball is all you have to knock the whole wall down. Keep the ball in play, aim your rebounds and clear every brick to finish the level.

How to play

• On a phone, drag anywhere on the screen to slide the paddle. Your finger never has to cover the ball. Lift your finger to launch.
• With a mouse, the paddle follows the pointer and a click launches. On a keyboard, use the left and right arrows and press Space.
• Where the ball meets the paddle decides where it goes. The middle sends it almost straight up; the ends send it off at a sharp angle.
• If the ball drops past the paddle you lose a life. Lose all three and the level is over.

Bricks

A brick's colour tells you how tough it is. Blue and green bricks break in one hit, gold bricks take two and red bricks take three. A tough brick changes colour as it weakens, so you always know what is left. Grey steel blocks never break, so on later levels you will need to bank the ball around them and through the gaps. Bricks marked with a star always drop a power-up.

Power-ups

Broken bricks sometimes drop a capsule. Catch it with the paddle to use it. The good ones give you a wide paddle, split every ball into three, slow the balls down, mount lasers on the paddle, make it sticky so you can catch the ball and aim before letting go, or add an extra life. Watch out for the striped capsules: they shrink your paddle or speed up the ball for a few seconds. Let them fall past if you can.

Levels, combos and stars

There are 34 hand-built levels, from a smiling face and a festival diya to a rocket, a sailboat, a butterfly and a steel vault. Breaking several bricks before the ball comes back to the paddle builds a combo, and every brick in a combo is worth more. Each level awards up to three stars: one for clearing it, one for losing no ball and one for beating the par time. Your progress and best scores are saved on this device.

Tips

• Aim for a gap in the wall. Once the ball gets behind the bricks it bounces along the top and breaks a long chain on its own.
• Move early. Watch where the ball will land rather than chasing it.
• Save the sticky paddle for the last few bricks so you can line up each shot.
• Press Esc or P, or the pause button, to take a break.