Idle Breakout is a video game developed by Kodiqi for computers and released in 2019. It's a hybrid of Idle Game and Breakout. You buy balls that automatically bounce around the screen, breaking bricks they touch. From bricks you get money which is spent on upgrades and more balls. After a while, you face black bricks which are tougher and have to be destroyed last, as well as boss bricks that have lots of HP.
The game is available on Kongregate here
and itch.io here.
This game provides examples of:
- Breaking Out: Breaking bricks with balls, only idle and on a far grander scale with tens or even hundreds of balls bouncing around.
- Boss Rush: Every boss fight after the first consists of all the bosses up to it plus a new one, with each lesser boss gaining one extra life. For example, the third boss comprises of Block Head with 3 lives, Blocky Balboa with 2 lives, and Blocko with 1. The game skips one boss for each level after 51, though, so you won't face Block Head with 52 lives.
- Crosshair Aware: Some bosses like Blockbeard have a targeting crosshair that moves around the screen. If their attack activates when there are balls within the crosshair, it freezes those balls.
- Export Save: This game has a not too large (for this trope anyway) copiable from a web window save file that is only 300+ bytes. It's also full of "MCwwLDAs"note if you've just started playing.
- Fake Longevity: Fighting a new boss requires you to fight all previous bosses with increasing numbers of extra lives. The only bosses for which this constitutes an increase in difficulty are the Time Limit Bosses, who need to have all their lives depleted in the same original time limit — other than those, if you've beat a boss once, you're pretty well assured that you can beat it again however many times you need to, so the whole thing largely serves to drag out the amount of time before you can see the new boss.
- Magikarp Power: Basic Balls are fairly useless outside of early-game as they don't do much damage and are effectively replaced by Cannonballs. That said, get the 0.3 skill which multiplies their power for every Basic Ball that you have and their damage output goes back after a while, making them as good or even better than Cannonballs.
- Monster Clown: Blocko is the third boss and also is displayed as a clown.
- New Game Plus: A prestige system is unlocked after breaking a gold brick. You get gold for every gold brick you destroy, then you can reset back to level 1 and use gold for permanent upgrades.
- No Plot? No Problem!: It's not explained why you're breaking bricks.
- Punny Name: All the bosses' names are some pun on "block" — Block Head, Blocka Doodle Doo, Blockodile, Blocktopus, Roblock, Call the Blocktor, Writer's Block...
- Shout-Out:
- The second boss is Blocky Balboa.
- The seventh boss is Blockwork Orange.
- A much later boss is Blockarina of Time.
- Skill Scores and Perks: V.1.08 introduced a small skill tree with abilities such as all balls being able to hit black bricks or additional offline income. Skill points are awarded from beating bosses.
- Splash Damage: Plasma Balls damage bricks next to the brick they originally hit.
- Status Effects: Poison Balls infect bricks so they take double damage. With skills, infected bricks can also take Damage Over Time and pass the infection to other bricks.
- Time-Limit Boss: Starting from Plymouth Block, bosses may have a few-minute time limit. This limit still applies when you rematch them fighting later bosses, and you have to deplete all their lives in the allotted time.
- Warm-Up Boss: Block Head is the first boss and also the easiest. 5 million HP is not much compared to what later bosses have, and it does not have any special ability other than an immunity to lasers.
- Wake-Up Call Boss:
- Third boss Blocko is the first boss to have health regeneration, meaning that if your DPS isn't good enough you will be unable to advance further. Subsequent bosses will also tend to have this regeneration as a trait.
- If you found Blocko, D-Block and Blockbeard easy or moderate, then Plymouth Block will be this. Not only does his health regeneration give him a huge hp gain compared to Blocko, D-Block and Blockbeard's regeneration, he is also the first Time-Limit Boss!
