The paddle in Breakout looks like a flat wall. The engine treats it as an aiming device, and the exact reflection rule decides which plays pay and which only look good.
The reflection rule
The paddle is 100 units wide and 14 tall, sitting at y 880 on a 540 by 960 design. When the ball, radius 8, meets the paddle top, the engine computes where it landed.
The landing spot maps to a value from minus 1 at the left edge to plus 1 at the right edge. The outgoing angle is straight up plus up to 0.38 pi, about 68 degrees, toward the side you hit. The outgoing speed is always exactly the current ball speed. The paddle redirects the ball, it never accelerates it.
Three shots follow from this rule. A center hit returns the ball straight up. A hit halfway out sends it about 34 degrees off vertical. An edge hit sends it nearly sideways at about 68 degrees.
Two control schemes, two accuracies
Mouse movement maps your pointer position directly to the paddle target. Arrow keys move the target at a fixed 600 units per second, which crosses the full 540 wide design in 0.9 seconds. Both pass through the same smoothing step, a fast lerp scaled by 20 times the frame time.
Use the mouse while the ball is in flight. Reserve the keys for small pre-positioning, because the mouse reaches any target instantly and the keys cannot.
Where the points are
The brick field is 10 columns by 8 rows, starting 140 units below the top. Each brick is 20 tall with 2 unit gaps, and the width works out to 51.8 units per brick across the 540 wide design. Row values fall from top to bottom, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, and 10 points per brick. The full field holds 80 bricks worth 3600 base points before any multiplier.
The combo rule multiplies those values. Every brick broken within 2.0 seconds of the previous one increments the combo count, and the multiplier is that count capped at 8. A paddle hit resets the count to zero. An 80 point brick under an 8x multiplier pays 640.
The top two rows alone hold 1500 base points, nearly 42 percent of the field. Aim your early rallies there while the ball is at its slowest, because those points cost the least reaction time at the start of a level.
The engine processes one brick collision per frame, which prevents tunneling and keeps corner clips clean.
Walls, lives, and the serve loop
The left, right, and top walls reflect the ball. There is no bottom wall, so a ball that passes the paddle line is gone. You start with 3 lives, shown as ball icons in the header.
A lost ball does not end your control session. The engine returns to a waiting state, parks the ball on the paddle, and waits for your tap to launch. The launch angle is straight up plus up to 0.4 radians either side, chosen at random. You cannot aim the serve, so set your paddle position before you launch, never after.
Clearing all 80 bricks triggers a 1.5 second transition, then the next level rebuilds the same field at a higher speed. The trail behind the ball holds the last 4 positions, which gives you a readable speed cue when the creep from brick clears starts to matter.
Speed rules you should plan around
Ball speed starts at 400. Each level multiplies the base by 1.1, so level 2 starts at 440 and level 3 at 484. Inside a level, every destroyed brick adds 0.5 permanently, and losing a life does not reset that creep. A fully cleared level adds 40 before the next multiplier applies.
The creep has a ceiling inside each level, since 80 bricks add at most 40. The level multiplier has no ceiling, so your long-term enemy is level depth, and per-level brick clears only sharpen it.
Playing the physics as a checklist
- [ ] Decide your target angle before the ball arrives, then present the matching third of the paddle.
- [ ] Open holes in the top rows early, since the 80 and 70 point bricks sit there and speed only rises over a level.
- [ ] Keep rallies inside the brick field, because every paddle touch resets your combo.
- [ ] Clear levels briskly, the 0.5 per brick creep makes a slow clear harder than a fast one.
- [ ] Use edge hits deliberately to send the ball on shallow crosses along the brick rows.
- [ ] Never plan around the serve angle, it is random within about 23 degrees of vertical.
Honest downsides. Three lives is the entire budget. The 2 second combo window punishes defensive play, and the shallow edge angles that feed combos also stretch the return trip, so the same shot that builds score delays your next touch. Best score and best level persist only in your browser storage, and a wiped browser loses them.
Load the [Breakout game](/en/breakout) and test the paddle rule directly. Catch the same falling ball once near the center and once near the edge, then compare the two exit angles against the 68 degree spread described here. If your measurement disagrees, send it, because the formula is one line of code and easy to check.
