How to Play Brick Breaker: Rules, Bricks and Power-Ups
In Brick Breaker you slide a paddle along the bottom of the screen and bounce a ball up into a wall of bricks. Every brick the ball hits cracks or breaks; clear them all to win the level. If the ball gets past your paddle you lose a life, so the whole game is about keeping the ball in play while you aim it at the bricks that are left.
The goal of Brick Breaker
A brick breaker level is a wall of bricks at the top of the screen, a paddle at the bottom and a ball between them. The ball moves on its own and bounces off the walls, the ceiling, the bricks and your paddle. Your only job is to move the paddle so the ball never falls past it.
On GameLake the paddle is a floating log, the ball is a pearl and the bricks are shells, stones and blocks of ice on a lake. A level is cleared when every brick that can break has broken. Clear all five levels of Easy, Medium or Hard to win the run.
How to play, step by step
- Move the paddle. On a phone, drag anywhere on the lake: the log follows your finger's movement, so your thumb never hides the ball. On a computer, move the mouse or hold the arrow keys.
- Launch the ball. The pearl starts resting on the log. Lift your finger, click or press Space to send it up. If you wait, it goes by itself after a few seconds.
- Keep it bouncing. Get the log under the pearl every time it comes down. Where it lands on the log decides where it goes next (see below).
- Break every brick. When the last breakable brick goes, the level is cleared and the next one starts with the pearl back on the log.
- Don't run out of lives. A pearl that falls past the log sinks into the lake and costs one life. You start with 5 lives on Easy and 3 on Medium and Hard.
How the paddle aims the ball
The ball doesn't just mirror off the paddle. The spot it lands on sets its new direction: the middle sends it almost straight up, and the further out towards an end, the more it leans to that side, up to about 62 degrees from straight up. This is the most important rule in the game, because it's how you aim.
The ball can never fly flat. However it bounces, it always keeps climbing or falling at a steady angle, and if it ever gets stuck in a loop that breaks nothing, the game nudges it onto a new path.
Brick types
| Brick | Hits to break | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Shell (pink, yellow, green, blue, purple, orange) | 1 | 10 |
| Stone (grey) | 2 | 25 |
| Ice block | 3 | 40 |
| Golden shell (with a pearl) | 1, and it always drops a power-up | 50 |
| Mossy rock | Never breaks | 0 |
Mossy rocks don't need to be broken to clear a level. They're there to get in the way: the ball bounces off them, so they guard gaps and change the angles you have to use.
Power-ups
Some bricks drop a bubble when they break, and every golden shell does. Catch the bubble with the log to get its power; miss it and it sinks into the lake.
| Power-up | What it does | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Long log | The log grows about half as long again | 14 seconds |
| Three pearls | Every pearl in play splits into three (up to 6 at once) | Until they fall |
| Slow pearl | The pearl moves at about 60% of its speed | 10 seconds |
| Sticky log | The pearl sticks to the log when it lands, so you can move and aim before letting go | 12 seconds |
| Laser frog | A frog sits on the log and zaps the bricks above it twice a second | 8 seconds |
Small bubbles in the top corner of the lake show which power-ups are on and how much time each has left. Losing a life ends them all.
Scoring and combos
Each brick scores its points when it breaks. Break several in a row without the ball touching the log and you build a combo: the 4th to 6th bricks score double, the 7th to 9th triple, and so on up to ×5. Clearing a level adds 200 points, and finishing a whole run adds 100 for every life you have left.
The ball also speeds up a little with every brick you break, so the end of a level is faster than the start. On Easy and Medium, clearing a level gives back one life (up to a limit), which makes a full five-level run fair for beginners.
Easy, Medium, Hard, Daily and Race
- Easy: a wide log, a slow pearl, 5 lives and friendly shell levels. Good for young players.
- Medium: a normal log, 3 lives, more stones and ice, and the first mossy rocks.
- Hard: a short log, a fast pearl, no extra lives, and levels where rocks hide the bricks behind narrow gaps.
- Daily: one new level every day, the same for everyone, played on Medium rules with its own leaderboard.
- Race: play a friend (or a stranger with Quick match) on the same course of levels with the same power-ups. The best score after two and a half minutes wins.
There's also a Classic look switch under the game: it turns the lake into a retro arcade screen with coloured brick rows on black, a flat paddle and a square ball.
New to the game? Press Teach me. Each time the pearl falls, Hop draws where it will come down, a faint log showing where to catch it, and the line it will then take to a brick he picked, and says it in one sentence. The pearl moves a little slower, and a coached run counts as practice, so it stays off the leaderboard.
Frequently asked questions
What is the goal of Brick Breaker?
Break every brick on the screen by bouncing a ball off your paddle, without letting the ball fall past the paddle. Each ball you lose costs a life; clear the level before you run out.
How do you control the paddle on a phone?
Drag anywhere on the game. The paddle follows the movement of your finger rather than sitting under it, so you can steer with your thumb low on the screen and still see the ball.
Do I have to break the grey rocks?
No. Mossy rocks can't be broken and don't count. A level is cleared when every shell, stone, ice block and golden shell is gone.
What happens when I miss a power-up?
It sinks into the lake and is gone. Power-ups are a bonus, so it's usually better to let one go than to lose the ball chasing it.
How many levels are there?
Five hand-made levels each on Easy, Medium and Hard, plus a new Daily level every day. Online races use the Medium and Hard levels in a shuffled order.