ncbricks

ncbricks is an addictive Arkanoid-like brick breaker game.

The player can navigate the paddle to bounce the ball back towards the bricks. The player earn points for breaking bricks, and for survival. Some bricks may drop charms that can be collected if they hit the paddle. Some charm help the player to beat the level, some charm, however, do the opposite. In addition, the player can shoot missiles that will be spawned in the middle of the paddle.

Releases

You can download release tarballs from this page.

Rules

Basically, the player earns 100 points for a touched breakable brick. Until the ball breaks other bricks before hitting the paddle, each brick increases the number of points to each by 100 points. Balls can be split with a charm. New balls do not inherit this touch counter, and each ball has its own counter.

The player earns 100 points for each breakable brick that hit by a missile, but this amount will not change in time.

The level can be won if all breakable bricks are destroyed.

The player loses one life if all the balls on the board fell out.

Most of the bricks have 1 hit points: if the ball hits it, the brick will be destroyed, and the ball bounces back. These bricks look like this: (====). Some of them have 2 (displayed as [====]) or 3 (displayed as {====}) hit points. If the ball hits one of these bricks, the brick loses one hit point, changes its appearance, and the ball bounces back. Also, there are unbreakable bricks in the game. These bricks are displayed as #====#. If the ball hits an unbreakable brick, the ball bounces back. Note, the player will not earn points for touching an unbreakable brick.

Charms

Some bricks have a charm walled in. If the brick breaked, the charm will fall down. The player can catch them with the paddle: if the charm hits the paddle, the charm bonus will be applied. Charm are always yellow (if colors are supported by the terminal), and have different letters assigned:

? : a random charm (this can be any charms listed below)
$ : earn 1000 points instantly
* : enable atomic ball for a short time
& : gain 1 extra life
+ : make the paddle wider (for a limited width)
- : make the paddle narrower (for a limited width)
@ : enable slow ball for a short time
: : small ammo pack
; : large ammo pack
^ : kill all balls on the board (lose 1 life)
# : missile apocalypse (spawn 1 missile in all column)
= : split the current ball (for a limited number)

Atomic ball

All balls enter this state, the ball skin replaced from o to *, and the ball will not bounce back from breaked bricks. This mode give the possibility to break many bricks. Note, the ball will still bounce back if it hits a bricks with more than one hit points, including the unbreakable bricks.

Controls

A: move the paddle left (large step)
S, Left: move the paddle left (small step)
D: move the paddle left (tiny step)
L: move the paddle right (large step)
K, Right: move the paddle right (small step)
J: move the paddle right (tiny step)
P: pause the game
Q: quit from ncbricks
SPACE: release the ball (start the game), shoot a missile

Configuration file

ncbricks will load two configuration files:

The global configuration file, which is located at /etc/ncbricks by default.
Per-user configuration file, which is loaded from the user's home directory with the name .ncbricks_config. The home directory will be obtained from the HOME environment variable.

Configuration files can have any amount of lines. Each line must be any of the following:

empty line, which will be ignored;
comment line (comments must begin with #), which will be also ignored;
commands in VARIABLE VALUE form. See the global configuration file to know which variables are available and what values can be assigned to them.