Brick Breaker — play the classic breakout game free in your browser

Brick Breaker is the arcade formula at its purest: a paddle, a ball, and a wall of 48 bricks that all have to go. Keep the ball in play by sliding your paddle under it, and aim your bounces — the ball flies off at a sharper angle the closer to the paddle's edge it lands, which is the whole skill of the game. Top-row bricks are worth the most points, and chaining several bricks in a single volley sends the pitch (and your score) climbing.

You get three lives. Clear the wall and a new one appears with the ball 10% faster and your paddle a touch smaller, so every run eventually ends — the only question is how many levels deep. It's free, runs in any browser on phone or desktop with no download, and your best score is saved on your device.

How to play

• Move the paddle — slide your finger anywhere on the game area, move the mouse, or hold the arrow keys.
• Tap, click or press Space to launch the ball off the paddle.
• Aim with the paddle: center hits bounce straight up, edge hits fly out at steep angles.
• Top bricks score more — the highest row pays 60 points, the bottom row 10.
• Drop the ball and you lose a heart; lose all three and the run is over.
• Clear the wall to reach the next level — faster ball, smaller paddle, bigger scores.

From Breakout to Brick Breaker: a 50-year-old mechanic

This genre started in 1976 with Atari's Breakout — famously prototyped by Steve Wozniak shortly before he co-founded Apple, as a single-player spin on Pong. A decade later Taito's Arkanoid (1986) added the trappings most people picture today: colored brick walls, power-ups and level progression. The version you're playing keeps the timeless core — angle control off the paddle is the entire skill ceiling, exactly as it was in 1976 — and it's why "just one more level" still works half a century later.

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