Hoshizora Block is a star themed Breakout clone freeware on Windows by μ"sic. The player controls a paddle using a mouse and destroys all blocks in a room. After 30 stages are finished, the stages are repeated with higher ball speed after some time has elapsed and/or altered block types.
Can be downloaded at Vector
or the the game's website.
Hoshizora Block contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: Any balls which fall off below the paddle but has yet to disappear count towards the ball count when determining bonus score and extra lives. Barriers which survive the stage also carry over.
- Breaking Out
- Cap: There are only 16 balls are allowed in the playing field at anytime, combos maxed out at ×15 and no more extra lives are given beyond 13, 4 (for the regular game) or all (for stage select) of which is give at the start of the game.
- Combos: Keeping it within the cap will grant all balls double power and/or barrier which either withstand 2 hits or have invincibility for a small amount of time and withstand 3 hits after the invincibility wears off.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: The balls speed up as number of hits increase up to a point.
- Guide Dang It!: How to script the events of bombs and warps, thanks to the game manual being in Japanese. It becomes intuitive once that point is solved. Right click the bomb at the block selection area and a window would pop out, allowing the script to be entered.
- Level Editor: Interestingly, stage 4 of the game is in the editor as stage 4. However, it is possible to play the saved levels only at the level select screen.
- 1-Up: Obtained by keeping the cap of balls in the playing field when a stage ends.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: It is entirely possible for the balls to get stuck with fixed trajectories accidentally. This is very annoying when that happens in later parts of the repeated stages.
