Pixel Breakout returns: psychedelia below

pixel breakout

This is variously auto-translated as "destroying particles," "particles breaking," and "breaking particle." It's Breakout, but with two important differences: each block you break becomes another ball you can bounce back up, and the blocks are only one pixel wide. It starts off slow. It doesn't stay like that.

It's actually a year old, but it's recently resurfaced, as things tend to do online. It's written on quite a cool website called WonderFL which lets you code flash apps in real time, share the source with the community, and lets them edit your code and publish it as a version or "fork" of your own. That's why, when a variant of Pixel Breakout appeared on Reddit over the weekend, it was easy enough to trace the original author and play this bonkers block bashing bonanza.

Like I said, it starts off slow. You have one pixel to paddle off into the groaning attic of multicoloured blocks, and when you knock one loose, you might have two if you can bat them both back up. You can't really keep any more than six going at one time unless you're really great at it, and if it wasn't for one strange quirk of the hit detection, it'd be a pretty boring affair - worthy of little more than a mention at the water cooler, like Tetoris .

I don't know why it happens. I don't know if it was originally supposed to happen at all. A pixel shoots up to the mass of rainbow blocks, clips through the first layer, and gets stuck a few pixels in. Then it rebounds around in a massive line, like a thread being pulled out of a sweater. It might do the whole row, or just a centimetre or so of pixels, but it's a doddle to catch them all and have them all rebound up and start causing their own havoc.

And, of course, the more you whack, the higher the chance that it'll happen again. Your reward for the initial slog is a critical mass of pixels that you can only fail to hit if you slide your paddle off the side of the play area completely. You can play it here , or you can play it below.