Brick Smash

About Brick Smash

Brick Smash is a paddle-and-ball game in the brick-breaking format. A wall of colored bricks sits at the top of the screen. A ball bounces between a paddle at the bottom and the brick wall above. Hit the ball with the paddle to send it up. Each brick the ball touches breaks. Clear all the bricks to advance. Miss the ball with the paddle and you lose a life.

This version is from 16Yongjin's collection of MIT-licensed single-file HTML5 games. The implementation is around 22KB total, including all gameplay code, color values, and physics. It is a clean, browser-only build with no external dependencies. The attribution and source link are on the game page footer.

The format goes back to 1976 with Atari's Breakout, designed in part by Steve Wozniak. The mechanic has remained largely unchanged since: paddle, ball, bricks, gravity-style bouncing. What differs between implementations is feel. Some have heavy ball physics. Some have light. Some let the paddle's edge angle the ball. Some treat the paddle as a flat reflector.

Brick Smash uses paddle-edge angling. Hit the ball on the right side of the paddle and it goes more right. Hit it on the left and it goes more left. The center of the paddle reflects the ball back at the same angle it came in. This means the paddle is not just a wall, it is an aiming tool.

Controls are arrow keys, mouse, or touch drag for paddle movement. Most players find the mouse and touch options the most precise because they let you target a specific x-position immediately rather than holding a key.

The ball moves at a steady speed early on, then accelerates as bricks break. Late-game ball speeds are noticeably faster than starting speeds. The change happens gradually so you do not notice it until you realize you are reacting reflexively rather than predictively.

Strategy is the same as the broader brick-breaking genre. The fastest clear is to break a hole through one column of bricks early, ideally on the left or right edge. Once the ball gets above the brick wall through that hole, it ricochets between the top of the screen and the back of the wall, breaking rows rapidly without you needing to do anything except keep the ball alive on the rare occasion it falls back through.

Setting up the breakthrough is the hardest deliberate skill. You need to keep aiming the ball at the same column for several consecutive bounces. The paddle-edge angling helps here: hit the ball at the same paddle position each time and the angle stays consistent.

Reading the ball's trajectory is the foundational skill. The ball moves in straight lines between collisions. With practice, you can predict where it will land just by watching its current vector. Beginners watch the ball with their paddle, always reactive. Stronger players move the paddle to where the ball will be.

The boring death is the horizontal trap. The ball gets stuck bouncing left and right between two side walls without going up or down. The fix is to use the paddle's edge to redirect into a steeper angle. A grazing hit on either side of the paddle adds vertical movement to the ball's velocity. This breaks the trap.

The version here uses six brick rows, each a different color. The colors are aesthetic, not functional. All bricks break with one hit. There are no special bricks, no hidden power-ups, and no boss patterns. Just a steady descent to the level clear.

There is no level select. Each run starts from the same brick configuration. Replay value comes from improving your time, your life count, and your overall score across attempts. The game runs cleanly in any modern browser, including mobile, and 16Yongjin's implementation is widely cited as a teaching example for HTML5 canvas physics.

Related: Brick Buster, Paddle Pong, Missile Defense