Zerdly

Brick Breaker

8 hand-drawn walls, 3 boss boards and 5 original modifiers, on a paddle that aims: where the ball lands on it sets the angle it leaves at, up to 62° either side of straight up. 5 modes, including a daily layout seeded by the date.

Stacking the wall…

The paddle is an aiming device

A mirror bounce would hand your direction back to you unchanged: the ball would go wherever it came from, and the paddle would be a wall you have to be standing behind. Instead, where the ball lands on the paddle sets the angle it leaves at — the middle sends it up, the edges send it out to 62°.

That spread is worth 1.88 of the field sideways for every field-width of rise. The wall sits about 1.19 above the paddle, so a shot from the edge reaches more than twice the width of the field — every column is reachable from anywhere, and the paddle is 16% of the field wide, so where on it you take the ball is a real decision.

Two traps, not one

Everybody knows the flat one: a ball travelling almost horizontally crosses the top of the screen for ever while the player waits. The floor here is 47% of the ball’s speed upward, enforced after every contact rather than only after the paddle — a brick can flatten a ball just as easily as a paddle can.

The other one is worse and almost nobody guards it. A ball returned from the exact centre leaves straight up, comes straight back down onto a paddle that is already under it, and leaves straight up again. A test bot that tracked the ball accurately found it immediately — and was rewarded with a dead board, sixteen bricks still standing. The ball now keeps at least 13% of its speed sideways, so it always walks across the field.

A board that cannot be finished is the only generator bug that matters

It is invisible to everything else: the wall draws, the ball bounces, the score goes up, and the player waits for ever for a brick sealed behind steel. Every board is flood-filled from open space before it is used, and one with an unreachable required brick is thrown away and generated again. It caught a real one — the third boss board shipped with its core ringed in steel on all four sides, twenty bricks no ball could ever have touched.

Local play

Everything runs in this browser. There is no sign-in, no leaderboard and no account: your settings, your bests and which Daily layouts you have played are kept in local storage under this route’s own keys, and clearing this game’s data leaves every other Zerdly tool alone. You get 3 lives in most modes.

Questions

How does the paddle actually aim?
Where the ball lands on it sets the angle it leaves at, up to 62° either side of straight up — not the angle it arrived at. That is the convention the whole genre rests on, and it is the difference between steering and catching: a mirror bounce would decide your direction for you. Measured, the spread reaches 1.88 of the field sideways for every field-width of rise, which means every column of the 10-wide wall can be reached from anywhere on the paddle.
Why does the ball never travel perfectly flat, or perfectly straight up?
Because both are traps, and this route shipped one of them. Flat, the ball crosses the top of the field for ever and the player waits — that is the famous one, and the floor on the vertical component is 47% of the ball's speed. Straight up is worse and much less famous: the ball comes back down onto a paddle that is already under it, leaves straight up again, and the board stops dead. A test bot found it at once, bouncing vertically in an empty column for twenty seconds a run. The ball keeps at least 13% of its speed sideways, so it always walks across the board.
Can a board ever be impossible to finish?
No, and the generator is asked rather than trusted. A wall with steel sealing a scoring brick inside it draws perfectly, bounces perfectly and can never be cleared — so every board is flood-filled from open space before it is used, and any board with an unreachable required brick is discarded and regenerated. It caught a real one: the third boss board shipped with its whole core ringed in steel, twenty bricks no ball could ever touch.
What does the streak bonus reward?
Bricks broken without the ball touching the paddle: 25 more for each one, up to 10 deep. It is the only thing on this board you can really plan. Anything that paid for "more bricks" would be paying for the board rather than the player; what a good player does is open a channel up one side and put the ball BEHIND the wall, where it clears a dozen before it comes back.
What are the modifiers, and can they stack?
5: Widen, Split, Pierce, Slow, Shield. They fall from broken bricks about 23% of the time and you catch them with the paddle. At most 2 timed ones run at once — a wide paddle AND a slow ball AND a piercing ball together is a board that plays itself. Catching a third retires whichever has least time left, so a lucky drop is never a punishment.
Do the modes actually differ?
Campaign, Endless, Boss Boards, Daily Layout, 2-Ball Chaos. Campaign is the 8 hand-drawn walls in order; Endless runs the same walls round and round, seasoning them harder each lap; Boss Boards are 3 walls that ask something the campaign never does; the Daily is seeded by the UTC date so it is the same layout for everybody; and 2-Ball Chaos starts every launch with two balls and only 2 lives.
What makes a brick tough or steel?
A tough brick takes 3 hits and pays 120; a plain one takes one and pays 50. Steel never breaks at all — it is a wall inside the wall, and its job is to shape where the ball can go rather than to be destroyed. A charge brick is worth 200 and is usually somewhere awkward. Four kinds, and each one changes a different decision.
Why does the ball get faster?
Because it is the whole difficulty curve, and the only one. It starts at 1.05 field-widths a second and gains a little every board you clear, to a cap of 1.7. No timer, no shrinking paddle, no rule changing underneath you — a board that starts comfortable finishes tense because of one number.
Can the ball pass through a brick?
No, and it is checked rather than hoped for. The simulation runs at a fixed 180 steps a second whatever the display does; at the speed cap the ball moves 9.4 thousandths of the field in a step, against a brick 32 thousandths tall. Every contact is solved for the TIME it happens rather than tested at the end of a step, and a corner gives a diagonal normal rather than a face one — a swept test is blind at a vertex, and the fix is a second check rather than a fudge factor.
Can I play without a mouse?
Yes. The left and right arrow keys (or A and D) drive the paddle at a fixed speed and space launches the ball; there are also two held buttons under the field. On a phone the paddle follows your thumb. The pointer-follow can be turned off in settings if you would rather drive it entirely from the keys.
What is stored about me?
Nothing that leaves this browser. Your settings, your best score for each mode and which Daily layouts you have played are kept in local storage under this route's own keys, and clearing this game's data leaves every other Zerdly tool alone. There is no sign-in and no leaderboard, because there is no server to hold one.

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