Really fun idea! I had a lot of fun playing, though I messed up a couple of levels on my first run and nuked my score because of it. Some thoughts:
- The core concept is really clever, a high-score game where you buy downgrades in exchange for more points is really fun. Spending points to gain points becomes a risk, and I think that works pretty well even if I didn't buy a ton of downgrades.
- The aesthetics are really nice! Simple, charming, fun. The colors you picked were nice, the icons on the bricks weren't super obvious but I figured out what each one did pretty quickly, the font you picked was nice. My only thoughts are that the play button and exit game button could have also fit the color scheme and aesthetic style better, and the in-level UI not using the 8-bit font was a bit of a missed opportunity (though the UI being easily readable is nice).
- The gameplay is solid, obviously it's just breakout but it's pretty well-implemented. I did notice the ball seemed to "curve" sometimes, but I'm not sure why (was it a powerup? M for Magnet? Maybe it'd be nice if there were explanations for what each brick does somewhere after all).
- The sounds are really nice! Normally I'd complain a bit about the lack of music, but for the style you're going for, music wouldn't really make much sense - and besides, the sounds were all solid. My only thought is that the lack of a loss jingle or effect kind of made the jump back to the upgrade screen jarring.
- Speaking of, the decision to forgo lives and instead advance the player to the next stage whether they beat it or not was GENIUS. It keeps the game from getting frustrating or stagnant, while also punishing players who mess up by giving them fewer points! The levels getting harder as the player buys downgrades is interesting, too - not sure if I entirely love it, but I suppose it would feel weird otherwise.
- In terms of downgrades, smaller balls was the one that felt the least troublesome to me, so it's the one I picked up the most. That said, I may have found a bug with the smaller balls where they'd sometimes get "caught" on each other or on the paddle, bouncing a whole bunch against them before getting freed? I'm not sure if it's related to the smaller ball downgrade or not, but it did save my run a few times so I'm not complaining, lol. I did also notice one case where a point item got stuck floating in mid-air, not sure what caused that.
- The tutorial screen is really well put together! It's not overwhelming and easy to grasp (though maybe the controls and the steps could be a bit more separated to make it clear they're two separate sets of information). My only thought is to include the fact that that up is used to start the ball's movement, since that took me a second to figure out. Thanks for allowing for both WASD and arrow keys, by the way!
The game was simple but really fun overall! Really neat twist on an old classic. Obviously high-score games aren't super popular these days, but I love a good one every now and then, and this really scratched that itch. Solid work!