There are perhaps as many Breakout-style games as there are grains of sand on a beach, but what if every brick in the game was itself another tiny version of Breakout? Designer Alan Hazelden’s BRICK[bricksmash]SMASH starts with a ball, a paddle, and 16 colored blocks. Inside each block is another paddle and 10 tiny bricks. And every time you hit a block, you start a new game inside it. Stick with it for more than a few minutes, and you’ll be keeping track of a dozen balls in varying sizes and colors, trying to get those elusive remaining bricks.
Play this: ‘BRICK[bricksmash]SMASH,’ the world’s most meta ‘Breakout’ clone
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
BRICK[bricksmash]SMASH may have the same DNA as an executive time-waster like Brick Breaker, but it ends up subverting the whole concept of a low-investment browser game by requiring intense concentration: from what we can tell, you can’t even pause it. We assume the limited resolution is the only reason it’s not just a fractal made of ever-smaller bricks and paddles.
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