Brick Out – Play Online for Free
A ball, a paddle and a wall of colored bricks: Atari brought that idea to the arcades in 1976 with its Breakout® cabinet. It was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who drew on Atari's own Pong. Steve Jobs was tasked with delivering a prototype, and his friend Steve Wozniak built the circuitry for it in four nights. Wozniak later wrote a version of his own for the Apple II, and it was already called Brick Out.
Ten years on, Taito breathed new life into the formula with Arkanoid®, where some bricks release capsules that lengthen the paddle, slow the ball or grant an extra life. In Japan, games like these are known as "block kuzushi," or block breakers. Our Brick Out online game is a development of its own and is not affiliated with Atari or Taito. Free Brick Out needs nothing but a browser, with nothing to install and no account to create, and you can play Brick Out on a computer just as well as on a phone.
Brick Out Online: Rules, Capsules and Tips
All you need is one hand: move the paddle at the bottom with your mouse, or drag it with a finger anywhere on the touchscreen. It glides left and right and can also rise and drop a little. A click or a tap launches the ball. Where the ball meets the paddle sets its angle: straight up from the middle, flatter and flatter toward the ends. Push the paddle up at the moment of impact and the ball speeds off; give way downward and you take pace off it. When the last ball drops out at the bottom, you lose a life. You start with three, and every level you clear adds one, up to five. A level is cleared once no breakable brick is left standing, and fireworks await after the tenth.
Colored bricks in Brick Out shatter at the first hit, while silver ones crack first. Riveted iron bricks withstand every ball, but you never need to break them to finish a level. Ember bricks explode and hit all eight neighbors, so one can set off the next. Further on you meet panes of glass that the ball flies straight through, hidden opals that only show up when first hit, coral that grows back after a while, and rows that slide from side to side.
Some broken bricks drop a capsule, which takes effect when you catch it with the paddle. It widens the paddle, gives you a life, slows every ball or turns each ball in play into three. Later levels add the sticky paddle, which holds the ball until you click or tap, the fire ball that burns through bricks, rockets that fire by themselves, a ball storm, chain lightning that jumps to bricks of the same color, double points, a safety floor that saves one ball once, and the blast ball that detonates at the next brick. When you play Brick Out on Normal or Hard, nasty capsules join them in the last levels: a small paddle, a fast ball, mirrored controls, ice that makes the paddle slide, and a power cut that darkens the field. On Hard one can even cost you a life. The bad ones carry no warning color, so watch the symbol.
On those two difficulties the Brick Out game grows more hostile in other ways too. Spiked balls fall from above, ball lightning zigzags toward you, and charged balloons drift in from the sides. Whatever touches the paddle gives it an electric shock that freezes it for a moment, though it costs no life. A plain ball simply kicks a balloon away. The fire ball, the blast ball, an electrified ball, a big ball from the storm, rockets and explosions pop it instead, and then comes a surprise: sometimes nothing, sometimes lightning, sometimes a good capsule or bonus points. Easy spares you all of this: no nasty capsules drop there, and good ones drop more often.
Every brick you break in Brick Out earns points, more or fewer depending on its color, and each further brick a ball hits before it touches the paddle again adds a growing bonus. Caught capsules score too, and at the end of every level each remaining life brings a bonus. Your best score is saved separately for each difficulty. The pause button or a right click halts the game, and it also stops by itself when you switch to another tab.
The key trick in Brick Out: send the ball through gaps behind the wall with the ends of the paddle. Up there it clears many bricks on its own, and the bonus grows with each one. Take a ball that has become too fast with a downward movement instead of pushing into it. With the sticky paddle you can aim calmly, for example between the iron bricks. When several balls are in play, keep an eye on the lowest one, since you only lose a life once none is left. Look at each capsule before you catch it, and dodge spiked balls and lightning by moving sideways or by briefly raising or lowering the paddle. Coral only grows back while other breakable bricks still stand, so break only as much coral as you need to get through and save the rest for last.
More Fast-Paced Games of Skill
No bricks, but a ball and a pair of flippers: that is Pinball. If you would rather stack than smash, fill rows with falling cubes in Falling Cubes, and in Bubble Shooter you pop bubbles of the same color. Match 3 has you swap colored stones into rows of three, and Minesweeper calls for a cool head rather than quick reflexes.