Hearthbreak
Catch the ember, break the wall, rekindle the hearth.
A brick breaker played by firelight. A glowing ember bounces between your wooden paddle and a wall of kiln-fired clay. Every brick it strikes cracks and shatters, and every ball you let slip past burns a life. Ten walls stand between you and a rekindled hearth, each denser and harder-fired than the last. Stubborn stone turns up at wall four, and from wall six the whole weave starts bearing down on you.
Then there are the "?" bricks, which drop tokens as they break. Green ones are gifts: extra embers, a wrecking ball, wildfire, a quake ember, a volley of bolts, a safety net, another life. Red ones are curses that pinch your paddle or send the ember running wild. Catch the green, dodge the red. Clear all ten walls and the hearth is rekindled. Free runs burn on through twenty.
How to play
- Move the paddle by pointing. It tracks your mouse, or wherever you touch on a phone. Arrow keys work too: a tap nudges it for fine aiming, a hold moves it quickly. Tap, click or press Space to launch the ember.
- Angle is everything. Where the ember lands on the paddle decides how it leaves. The edges send it wide, the middle sends it tall.
- Break every clay brick to bring a wall down. Dark kiln bricks take two or three hits, cracking as they go. Stone only breaks for a wrecking or quake ember, so play the angles around it.
- "?" bricks drop a gift when broken. Catch it with the paddle. It might be extra embers, a wider paddle, a wrecking ball that tears straight through, wildfire that scorches neighbouring bricks with every break, a quake ember that crushes clay in one hit and shakes its neighbours, a volley of bolts fired upward, an ash net that saves one fallen ball, or a whole extra life. Which brick holds which gift is decided when the wall is built. Catching it is up to you.
- An ember lost off the bottom costs a life, and you have three. With several embers in play, only losing the last one hurts.
- Tokens come in two colours. Green are gifts, red are curses. Catch the green and let the red fall.
- From wall six the weave creeps downward. If it reaches the smolder line it costs a life and recoils, so keep the low bricks broken.
- Clear all ten walls and the hearth is rekindled. That's the daily win. Your score counts either way, and free runs burn on through twenty walls.
Your statistics
The breakout formula, warmed up
If you grew up on Breakout or Arkanoid, your hands already know this game: a paddle, a ball, a wall that comes down brick by brick. (Both are their publishers' games; Hearthbreak isn't affiliated with either.) What's ours is the hearth — the warm palette, the gift-and-curse tokens, stone that reshapes the angles, and a daily seeded run where everyone faces the same ten walls.
One run a day
One seeded run a day. The same ten walls for everyone, the same brick layouts, the same stone placements, the same "?" drops. Your first attempt is the one that counts. Clear the tenth wall and your streak grows, and your score joins the day's leaderboard either way, whether the hearth was rekindled or the run ended in ash.
After that the play button just keeps dealing. Fresh twenty-wall runs, as many as you want, none of them recorded.
One paddle, every screen
Hearthbreak plays the same on a desktop and a phone because there's really only one control: a target. Your mouse position is the target. The spot you touch is the target. The arrow keys steer the target, gently on a tap and quickly on a hold. The paddle goes where you point it. What you actually get better at is reading the ember's arc early and being where it's going to land, rather than at fighting the controls.
Ten walls, three ways harder
The run gets harder along three axes at once. Walls grow denser and more enclosed: bands and checkers early, arches and fortresses and high ramparts late. Bricks fire harder, so from the third wall the dark kiln bricks take two hits and from the fifth some take three, cracking visibly as they weaken. And from the fourth wall stone enters the clay, unbreakable grit that reshapes every angle and guards whatever sits behind it.
The ember does pick up a little speed each wall, and quickens gently within each life. But speed isn't really what makes the late walls hard.
The "?" brick
Scattered through every wall are bricks marked with a breathing "?". Break one and a small tile drops toward the floor. Catch it on the paddle and it opens.
Inside might be three more embers splitting off the one in play. A wider paddle. The wrecking ember, tearing through clay and stone alike without bouncing. Wildfire, which makes every break scorch the bricks beside it. The quake ember, swollen to twice its size, crushing clay and stone in one hit and cracking everything around the impact. A long volley of bolts spat upward from the paddle. An ash net strung across the floor, two strands thick, each strand forgiving one fall. Or, rarest of all, a whole extra life.
Gifts stack. Catch the same one again and its clock extends while the effect deepens: a twice-wide hearth, a hotter wildfire, a faster volley, a quake ember swollen even larger. The gifts are fixed into the wall when the day is dealt, so a daily run is fair. Which brick holds which gift is something you only learn by breaking it.
Scoring
Simple clay scores ten. Twice-fired clay scores twenty-five, thrice-fired fifty, and shattered stone forty. Bricks broken in a single flight, meaning between two touches of the paddle, build a combo that pays a little more for each one and shakes the room when it runs long. Bringing a wall down banks a bonus, with extra for every life still burning, and rekindling the hearth on the tenth wall pays the biggest bonus in the game.
The real scores come from long flights. Send the ember up through a channel and let it work the far side of the wall on its own.
Streaks and the daily archive
Rekindle the hearth on consecutive days and you build a streak. A run that ends in ash resets it. Every past day lives in the archive with the same seed, walls and gifts that shipped that day, free to replay without touching your record. Nothing about a run is random beyond its seed, so an archive replay is a genuine second attempt.