Bricktide

What it is

Bricktide is a brick breaker on a clock: a new row of bricks arrives every few seconds and the wall keeps sliding toward your line, faster as the run goes on. Four bricks between paddle touches earns an extra ball, and a smash timed on contact punches through the next brick, armour and all.

How to play

Breakout where the bricks come for you: rows march down the screen in real time and the run ends the instant one touches your line. Keep the ball alive, hold the tide back, and learn the smash, a timed input at the moment of paddle contact that turns the ball into a piercing cannonball.

1. 1Smash the ball as it meets the paddle: it pierces bricks and multiplies your points. Steer, keep balls alive, keep room above the line.
2. 2The tide marches down. Keep room above the line: the run ends the instant a brick touches it.
3. 3The bar down the left edge is your clock. It is the room between the lowest brick and the line, it shortens as the tide comes, and its label counts it: TIDE · 6 ROWS OF ROOM. Marquee at four, Hot at two, and NO ROOM LEFT when there is none.
4. 4BALLS under the shell HUD is your supply. Lose the ball on the field and the run stops, says so, and spends a dot; spend the last one and it is over.
5. 5The first ball waits for you. Drag or press space to steer, then tap or space to launch — nothing launches itself until the paddle has moved.
6. 6The smash is space on a keyboard, a sideways flick or a second finger on a phone, at the moment of contact. The ball turns yellow and pierces the next brick, armour and all. Your first run plays one for you.
7. 7The paddle's ring closes as the ball comes in and reads SPACE NOW — FLICK SIDEWAYS ON CONTACT on a phone. A miss reads EARLY or LATE. One input per contact: a second one locks the smash for 0.8 seconds.
8. 8Brick colour is decoration. Only the ringed, pipped bricks are armoured: two hits, or one smash. Gold pays 50 and a red core clears its neighbours.
9. 9Break four bricks between paddle touches for an extra ball, which joins the dots; ten pays 5× on points, and the chip says what is driving it.
10. 10Clear ten rows for TIDE HELD, which pushes the whole tide back two rows and buys the clock back.