A well made version of classic breakout with some added pressure.
PROS:
- Visual design is nice and clean, follows the palette limitations well, and serves the gameplay very well.
- Encountered a trapped ball and managed to free it for multi-ball so that felt really rewarding for having focused targets.
- Multiple health points does allow for some balance capability if players tend to fall behind so that feels like a good mechanic to have in play for balance tweaking.
CRITIQUES:
- It was a little confusing at first what having 3 hearts meant: I initially thought it was associated with being able to drop the ball 3 times and didn't notice the heart counter go down when I let a row of blocks slip through. Something like pulsing the counter and flashing it a different color when it went down would draw more attention to it when it was affected and help give players the association that's intended.
- It feels like the pacing of the block movement would be tricky to balance, but it would be interesting if you could embellish the moments when players are about to take damage from a row of blocks reaching the bottom. Stuff like adding a dramatic music riff with a stinger, make the row of blocks that are about to damage the player wiggle in place or pop into a particle explosion when they deal the damage to just really sell the moment. You could also "slow time" if a row is about to deal damage just to give players a tiny bit more control of their own fate in the moments of their impending peril.