SDL-Ball

About the game

SDL-Ball is a brick-breaking game in the tradition of Breakout, DX-Ball and Megaball. You move a paddle along the bottom of the screen and bounce a ball up into a wall of bricks; when every breakable brick is gone, the next level starts. There are 50 levels, each with its own layout and background, and after the last one the game starts over from the first, now with double points.

Bricks are not all alike. Most break at the first hit, glass ones crack first and break at the second, cement ones only give way to explosions or a ball that goes through everything, explosive ones blow up their neighbours, and invisible ones only show up after they are hit. Many bricks hide a power-up that falls when they break. Good ones make the paddle wider, turn the ball into a fireball, glue it to the paddle, split it into more balls, mount a gun on the paddle or let the ball go straight through everything. Bad ones shrink the paddle, make the ball small and fast or even cost you a life, so not everything that falls is worth catching.

Every power-up you catch also gives you coins. The shop at the bottom of the screen turns them into power-ups of your choice, from a laser sight for 600 coins to an extra life for 6,000, and each one can be bought once per level.

The game was written by Jimmy Christensen, who started it in 2008 as his first game and released it as free software, graphics and sounds included. The version here is the current one from his repository, which moved the game to SDL 2.

Playing it here

This is SDL-Ball compiled for the browser from the author's source code. The download is about 7 MB. The fonts of the original package were replaced with two similar free fonts, Lilita One for the menus and Chakra Petch for the score and messages. The game is in English. Saved games, high scores and settings are kept in this browser; clearing this site's data deletes them.

The game takes over the mouse pointer to steer the paddle: click the game to start, and press Escape to get the pointer back. Pressing Escape a second time opens the game's menu.

Controls

Getting started

Pick a difficulty. New Game in the menu offers Easy, Normal and Hard. Easy starts with five lives and 600 coins in the bank; Normal and Hard start with three lives and no coins, and on Hard the ball speeds up faster.

Learn the power-ups. The title screen lists every power-up with a short line on what it does. Press F1 during a game to see it again.

Save between levels. Escape opens the menu, where Save Game stores the game in one of six slots: type a name and press Enter. A save keeps the start of the current level, so you cannot save on level 1.

Tips

Aim with the paddle. Where the ball lands on the paddle decides the angle it leaves at: near the edges sends it off sideways, the middle sends it up more steeply. Use the edges to reach bricks in the corners.

Think before catching. Shrink Paddle, Die and Drop, which moves the wall of bricks down, all make life harder. Sometimes it is better to let them fall past.

Glue buys time. With glue on the paddle the ball sticks where it lands, so you can move it to the right spot before sending it off again. Together with the laser sight it shows exactly where the ball will go.

Spend your coins. Coins only help when they are spent. A multiball or a wider paddle bought at the start of a hard level often pays for itself quickly.

Stuck behind cement? If 20 seconds go by without a brick breaking, the ball turns explosive by itself, so it can blast through the bricks it could not break before.