Brickout is a brick-busting arcade game where you knock out walls of bricks one bounce at a time. You can play Brickout unblocked with a mouse, keys, a touch screen or a gamepad. What makes it stand out is that the special bricks wear their reward as an icon, in plain view, so you can aim for the power you actually want, whether that is a laser, a wider paddle or an extra ball.
Your First Rally
The title screen runs a computer-played demo in the background. Choose PLAY and the ball sits on your paddle until you launch it with a click, a tap or the Space bar. It leaves at a slightly random angle, bounces off the side and top walls, and shatters any brick in its way.
The spot where the ball meets your paddle decides the new angle. Catch it near an edge and it flies off sharply to that side. Catch it in the middle and it goes up steeply. Learning to steer with the edges is the single biggest skill in the game.
You get three lives. Losing the last ball in play costs one of them, and it also wipes out any active powers and the extra paddle width you built up. Lose all three and the run is over.
Points and Combos
Plain bricks are worth 100 each, while the tougher two-hit kind is worth 200. Gray bricks give nothing. Each value gets multiplied by your combo, which goes up by one with every brick you smash before the ball returns to the paddle. Floating numbers such as x3 or x7 pop up over the broken bricks so you can watch the multiplier climb.
This is why getting the ball above the bricks pays off so well. Once it squeezes through a gap past the bottom rows, it can rattle around up top and stack a huge multiplier without coming down.
The Five Brickout Layouts
The run cycles through five boards, each 18 bricks wide:
- Wall: six solid rows of plain bricks.
- Pyramid: seven rows that narrow to a point.
- Castle: plain bricks boxed in by gray walls that never break, with small gaps along the floor.
- Checkerboard: plain and tough bricks in alternating squares.
- Gauntlet: a random maze that is generated fresh every time you reach it. The code limits how many gray bricks can line up, so it never seals itself shut.
Finish the fifth board and you start again from the first with a faster ball. Your lives and paddle width carry over to the next board, so a good run snowballs.
Picking Your Power-Ups
Every board hides eight special bricks. They have a frame and an icon, and breaking one drops that exact power. You still have to catch it with the paddle, since a missed pickup falls off the bottom and is gone.
The game rolls each special brick from this pool, from most to least common:
- Wide paddle. Adds width to your paddle each time, up to double its starting size. The bonus stays until you lose a life.
- Multi-ball. Splits two new balls off the current one. You only lose a life when every ball is gone.
- Sticky paddle and laser, which are about equally common. For ten seconds, sticky makes the paddle catch the ball so you can aim the release. The laser lasts ten seconds and every click sends up two beams.
- Slow ball and fireball, also about equal. Slow cuts ball speed to 65 percent for ten seconds. Fireball plows through plain and tough bricks for eight seconds without bouncing.
- Heart. The rarest drop, worth one extra life.
Brickout Tips for Higher Scores
- Stack paddle width. Each wide pickup adds more, so grab them all early on a board.
- Point the laser at tough bricks. Two beams per click melt stubborn rows while the ball stays safe.
- Save the fireball for crowded spots. Let it tunnel into the thickest part of the wall, not a lone brick.
- Use sticky to aim for gaps. Hold the ball, slide under an opening, then release to send it up behind the bricks.
- Grab the heart. It is rare, and an extra life is worth more than a few points.
Mistakes New Players Make
Chasing a falling power-up while a ball is coming down is the classic way to lose a life. The ball always comes first. Another habit to drop is hitting every shot with the middle of the paddle, which sends the ball straight up and back down without ever finding a gap. Also watch out on later waves: the ball gets ten percent faster every loop, so a habit that worked on wave one can fail on wave three.
Playing at School
Brickout runs well on almost any school device because it uses so little. Esc pauses, and R restarts the run when you want a fresh shot at a high score. The options menu lets you lower the sound or turn off screen shake, which is handy in a quiet room. A single board takes a couple of minutes, which fits a short break, while a long run across several waves can fill a lunch period.
Want more quick reflex games? Browse the arcade games. Paddle Ball keeps the paddle but turns it into a one-on-one rally to 10 points, and Snake Game swaps bouncing for steering a tail that keeps growing.
