Rebound

In the spirit of the classic brick-breaker.

The paddle-and-ball brick wall, rebuilt so your keyboard is the paddle. Every brick carries a character, and so does the ball.

The ball wears the last brick it broke

When the ball smashes a brick it takes on that brick's character. On the way down it shows it to you, and the only way to save the ball is to type it. Get it right and the paddle slides underneath and sends the ball back up; miss it and the ball is gone, along with a life. So every rally is the same small exercise: see a character break loose, read it while it falls, produce it before it lands.

Or smash bricks yourself

Between catches you can type any brick's character and a shot from the paddle shatters it. That is how you finish a wall quickly, and it is how you get at the last few bricks the ball keeps missing. It also means you are always scanning the wall for characters you know cold, which is exactly the habit that makes reading faster.

Speed is the dial

At level one the ball gives you around four seconds from the moment it turns downward to the moment it reaches the paddle. By level fifty that is closer to a second and a quarter. A wrong keystroke speeds the ball up for the rest of the wall, so accuracy buys you time.

Walls and courts

The wall grows from three rows of six to five rows of nine, and every brick introduced in a level is guaranteed to be in it. Each tier plays on a new court — sunset grid, ocean arcade, jungle, ice cavern, volcano floor — and after level fifty the bricks and the ball carry whole words.

Raining Cats → · Fire Force →