Vircout

About the game

Vircout is a Breakout-style game with a neon look. A paddle at the bottom, a ball, and rows of blocks above: keep the ball in play, break every block that can be broken and move on to the next of eight levels. Some blocks need several hits, some are made of metal and only bounce the ball back, and some drop power-ups that you catch with the paddle, such as the laser that lets you shoot blocks.

You start each life with the ball resting on the paddle. Aim by choosing where on the paddle the ball leaves, launch it, and try not to let it fall: you have a handful of lives, shown at the top next to your score. The levels were drawn by hand in the end, even though the first drafts came from an AI.

Playing it here

Vircon32 is a 32-bit virtual game console designed by Carra: a fantasy machine that never existed as hardware, with a 640x360 screen, 16 sound channels and a simple gamepad, built to be easy to program and to emulate. This game is a native Vircon32 cartridge, so it runs here in the console's official emulator, compiled for the browser; no BIOS or firmware from any company is needed, because the standard open source BIOS of the project is built in.

Vircout is the first Vircon32 game written in Lua, with the v32lua compiler. Its author says openly that it was made with the help of AI: the code, graphics, sound effects and music were generated that way, and the author released the game under the BSD licence and the assets under CC0.

Click Play, press Enter at the title screen, move the paddle and press X to launch the ball. Press Enter to pause.

Controls

On a phone or tablet the console's buttons appear on screen, under the picture (or on the sides, with the device lying down). A game controller connected to the browser also works. F2 saves the emulator state and F4 loads it. The game's own saves are kept in your browser.

Tips

Use the edges of the paddle. The ball leaves in the direction of the part of the paddle it hits, so hitting with the edge sends it sideways and helps you reach the corners.

Catch the power-ups. They fall slowly; it is worth moving for them as long as the ball is not about to drop.

Keep an eye on the metal blocks. They do not break, so do not waste time trying: clear the rest of the level and it ends.

Credits and licence

Vircout was made by Carra, with the help of AI, and published in 2026. The game and its source code are under the 3-Clause BSD licence, and the graphics, sounds and music are released under CC0 1.0. The cartridge was compiled from Lua by the v32lua compiler by Matthew Haas (3-Clause BSD), whose runtime is part of the ROM. We built the cartridge ourselves from the author's source; the licence texts and the exact source are linked from this page.