Idle Brick Breaker

After my last post on Brick Breaker apps, and how they all appear to be cut from the same template, here is one that takes a different direction entirely.  It is Idle Brick Breaker by TechTree Games.

This one starts off with a very basic pattern of blocks worth one point each, and one super slow ball.  Which might make you wonder what the point of it is.  Well, you can break those blocks by tapping on them, then spend the imaginary money to buy more balls and upgrade their speed and power.  That's right, you can soon have 5 balls, faster ones, then at $150 you unlock a new type of ball.  I chose the Sniper Ball: it automatically targets the nearest block when they bounce off a wall, though it can be funny when some other ball busts their target before they can get there.  The ball after that was at $10K I think, and I chose the Demo Ball, which was described as "stupid slow but it packs a punch" ... yup, 300 points per hit, and you can slowly buff those up as well.  The level 1 power boost gives it a power of 601, when only a few blocks over 1K ever appear.

The costs of things do seem to spiral out of control as you go forward, but the level designs have a reasonable variety.  I think the 4th ball cost $150K, and I picked the Splash Ball which has a small area of effect.  The 5th new ball is at $10M.  There are stage bonuses for completing each level.  And as would expect for any digital game, every number in the game can be boosted or tweaked.

The second icon at the bottom lets you spend 20 gems to get new cards, and 50 gems to open a new card slot.  These give boosts to ball speed or power, with multiple levels of each boost available.  The third icon gives a few quick boosts for gems, and the last icon is for Prestige, which I have no clue about.

New "perks" appear up top on level 20, 50, 100, and I assume at some regular intervals for as long as you play.  I currently have "New ball costs -20%" and "Stage bonus x1.6". If there's a number, offer a tweak for it.

As an idle game, there is the usual mechanic of earning points while away.  A 2 hour break netted me $1.25M.  Of course you can start throwing real cash at it.  This developer has a $9.99 deal to remove ads from a game, which is fair to me.  If I like a game and get to spend a few hours analyzing it and breaking down the logic of it, that's worth a tip to the developers.  A Starter Pack will double your cash permanently, plus 150 gems, for $9.99.  Or you can watch an extra ad for x1.5 cash for one hour.  Of course, the pay packages get out of control -- there are always options for big money.  Here, $99.99 gets you 3000 gems, or $29.99 gets you an epic pack to x4 your cash permanently, plus 750 gems.  Yeah, it nags with little "free" offers that all require you to watch an ad.  Meh, that's the world we live in.  The nags stay in their little icons and you don't have to click them.

So here is a different branch of the block breaker family of games, where you never have to aim a shot.  You could theoretically just let it sit there and bounce balls all day.  Watching different balls with different rules beating away at those targets is somewhat amusing, especially the sniper balls, since as the number of targets gets smaller, you can clearly see them grouping up on the ones that are left.

I will probably keep it around for a few days, poke at it some more, and move on.  But part of me likes to keep analyzing them and see what new twists turn up.

1/8 update:

An occasional bonus level gets this weird grid in the background and lags a bit, but overall it keeps progressing nicely.  

You can destroy those cheap ordinary balls you got early on, and invest in heavier balls, and try to keep up the pace of wrecking each level in 15-20 seconds as the values of every block keep rising.  It's still just a time sink, but I am curious to see where it goes, although the next new ball type won't be available until I hit $100B, which sounds crazy.