Atari Breakout Game

Atari Breakout is a mouse-only remake of the block-smashing classic, built by Thin Xii. A wall of colored blocks sits above your paddle; keep the ball alive by bouncing it back up, and every block it clears is gone for good. Miss, and the ball drops past your paddle for good.

The twist over the original arcade game is the power-up drops: as you clear blocks, icons occasionally float down toward your paddle. Grab one and it changes how you play for a while — more balls in play at once, a wider paddle, a tougher ball, or paddle-mounted lasers that shoot straight up into the blocks. Only one power-up is active at a time, so scooping up a new one drops whatever you were using before.

Controls

• Move the mouse to slide the paddle left and right
• Left mouse button to launch the ball at the start of a life

Tips

• Aim for the edges of the ball when it hits your paddle — a glancing hit sends it off at a sharper angle, which is often the only way to reach blocks tucked in the corners.
• Don't chase every power-up if it pulls your paddle out of position — a wide paddle you can't get under is worse than no power-up at all.
• Multi-ball is the easiest to waste: once it's active, focus on keeping any one ball alive rather than trying to track all of them equally.

It's a quick, low-commitment game to have open for a few minutes between things — no levels to unlock, just one wall of blocks at a time.