Brick Bloom

Controls

Drag your finger or move the mouse to slide the paddle, and tap or click to launch the seed ball. Keys: Left and Right arrows or A and D move the paddle, Space, Up or W launch the ball. P or Esc pauses.

How to play Brick Bloom

Brick Bloom is a breakout game in a flower garden. Slide the paddle along the bottom of the screen and keep the seed ball in play. Every bud brick you break opens into a flower in the strip of grass below, and the level is done when every bud has bloomed.

You have three balls per level. Where the ball hits the paddle sets its angle, so hitting it near an edge sends it out wide. Breaking buds quickly one after another builds a combo that raises the points for each one.

Five gardens and what grows in them

There are 50 levels in five chapters of ten, each with its own sky. Early levels are plain buds. Then come hard buds that take two or three hits, metal blocks that never break, buds that slide from side to side and bees that fly around the screen. Later gardens add pollen bombs that burst everything next to them, gold key buds that open caged buds, weeds that keep growing back until the rest of the garden is clear, fast butterflies and, in the last chapter, a Queen Bee who takes many hits and calls in worker bees.

Some buds drop power-ups. Catch them with the paddle for multiball, a wider paddle, a sticky paddle, a fireball that smashes through buds or a seed shooter. Later you can also find slow ball and a safety hedge that bounces one falling ball back up, but watch for the thorn capsule, which shrinks your paddle.

Tips and tricks

• Finish a level without losing a ball to earn three stars. Every ball you drop costs a star.
• Aim for the pollen bombs early. Their blasts chain and can clear a whole row.
• On a lock level, go for the gold key buds first. The caged buds cannot be broken until every key has bloomed.
• If you run out of balls you can watch a short ad for three more and carry on. Skip it and you get nothing, but the button stays so you can try again.