Pits and Bricks by jimmothysanchez

[raw]
made by jimmothysanchez for Ludum Dare 57 (COMPO)

MainMenu (Medium).PNG

Pits and Bricks

The classic game of breakout inverted. You are the bricks. Can you outlast the wrecking ball and send it deep into the depths? Let me know your high score!

Structures

  • Brick Wall - Can block the ball for 1 hit.
  • Tall Wall - Can block the ball for 2 hits.
  • Wild Card Barrel - Gives a random effect that is usually good when it gets hit by the ball.
  • Brick maker - Constantly makes bricks so you can buy more structures.

Controls

  • WASD - Move camera
  • Mouse - Click to place structures

Notes

  • You lose once all your structures are gone.
  • Once you lose all your Brick Makers you won't be able to make any more bricks, so protect them at all costs!
  • It is still possible to win even after you are no longer able to make any moves. Just cross your fingers and hope!
  • Wild Card Barrel can do bad things as well as good, but it's more likely to be helpful than hurtful.

HighresScreenshot00020.png

HighresScreenshot00023.png

Ratings

Overall 89th 3.658⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 67th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 23th 4.075⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 242th 3⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 144th 3.45⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 109th 3.425⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 90th 3.147⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 214th 3.105⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 12🗳️ 22🗨️

Feedback

BarnabeWild
07. Apr 2025 · 16:57 UTC
Nice twist on breakout, I felt that I lost when I could still continue playing. Well done!
Dingbat
07. Apr 2025 · 19:49 UTC
This was super fun! classic arcade game combined with tower defense? Sounds like my kinda game.
I honestly was super hooked... I love trying to find exploits and strategies in games like this. I beat hard mode by building a front line and just mass producing the brick makers until I had over 10k bricks than I launched my assault haha. Super fun concept, great job!
Uzpykes
07. Apr 2025 · 19:54 UTC
Great game. Wish it was paced slight faster as at the start there's quite a bit of waiting between placing the brick walls. But overall it was captivating, played through all difficulties (could not win the hardest one though :sweat_smile:)
Spexxilove
07. Apr 2025 · 19:59 UTC
![GG.png](///raw/bb5/1/z/6a5b5.png)

good game. not sure if this counts as me beating it xD
also nice to see someone else using unreal^^
🎤 jimmothysanchez
07. Apr 2025 · 20:52 UTC
@spexxilove ha ha ha... well that's not supposed to happen...
🎤 jimmothysanchez
07. Apr 2025 · 21:11 UTC
@dingbat I think the trick to winning on hard is a combination of well placed barrels and dumb luck.
Blues
08. Apr 2025 · 02:55 UTC
had a great time playing, good vibes and a great idea for a game mechanic! makes me want a pvp version. paddle v builder B).
ruthiepee
08. Apr 2025 · 20:37 UTC
Ooooh I love this twist on breakout, it's like tower defense X pong. Anyway I'm kind of obsessed with this game. It's fun to experiment with different strategies. Spamming brick makers is obviously the most fun. But winning on sheer luck is fun too, LOL. I was kind of wishing hard mode would be faster as well but it has a great frenetic pace and looks beautiful too. Awesome work
melonboy
09. Apr 2025 · 11:17 UTC
cool idea! gameplay is a bit passive, it would be nice with some more active ways to interact with the ball.
baknik
10. Apr 2025 · 02:36 UTC
Hard difficulty was definitely the way to go. I was able to place walls one at a time just to block the ball, then focus on building up production and barrel effects.
JovialKnoll
11. Apr 2025 · 00:42 UTC
Wonky physics: fun! There's some weird accel or smoothing / something going on here but it kept me on my toes. Making this a placement-style game was weird-in-a-good-way. Sure, the camera movement could be smoother and the brick growth numbers maybe want a little tweaking, but this is way more solid at 30 seconds in than I thought it would be at first. Innovative and on-theme, we love to see it.
atsh
12. Apr 2025 · 06:44 UTC
Very original idea! The graphics and music was cute

The game is currently a bit too easy, even on hard, and the ball takes too much time to go across the screen

I think this can be a good base for something really good!
Sam Minh
13. Apr 2025 · 12:06 UTC
I really liked it! It is simple to understand and play around with. I really like games with a lot of freedom, which these building games have. I beat the hardest difficulty pretty easily. I am confident I could have gone on forever if I wanted to. I decided to stop it by spamming the barrels so the ball left the arena at 331 seconds with 3456 bricks made.
There is a really easy strategy where you just spam the brick makers. I would suggest making each brick maker more expensive than the last so its not that easy to spam them. And maybe the 'player' that controls the paddle at the back can also get some powers sometimes to make it more difficult over time so there would be an end point where you would just lose. (Piercing, double damage, faster ball, curved balls).
And for building it would be great if you could build the same thing consecutively instead of having to go back to the bottom bar menu to click it. And I would have liked a simple 1-4 button link to each building so you can quickyl switch to each structure.
All in all, really good entry!
![Pits and Bricks.png](///raw/23d/e1/z/6c1fc.png)
muriel
13. Apr 2025 · 12:54 UTC
Hehe great entry, The shapes and the colors reminded me a bit to when I was playing gameboy pocket. Keep it up!
designernap
16. Apr 2025 · 10:04 UTC
Nice game here, gave it a few goes and really enjoyed trying to defend the brick makers.
Eugenik
16. Apr 2025 · 11:15 UTC
Great game, I enjoyed it :).
Rhoka
17. Apr 2025 · 00:46 UTC
Nice fun entry, good job! I encountered what felt like a bug a few times where the paddle just stopped moving entirely within a few seconds of starting so I instantly won. Once I got the hang of it though I jumped straight into hard mode. I'm not really sure what the differences are between the modes? sometimes I felt like the ball kind of had a mind of its own and would break a block then instantly keep coming forward and break more without bouncing back. The difficulty ramps down fairly quickly though once you get a few brick makers going and build a wall to protect them. Perhaps it could get harder over time by adding multiple balls, or it gets the ability to smash through 2 blocks at once? Other than that good job! Here was my score on hard!

![PitsBricks.png](///raw/d64/31/z/6c451.png)
val.ociraptor
22. Apr 2025 · 23:15 UTC
Very cool!! I really liked how intuitive it is for a jam since its working off of existing genres. I can really see this being built up into a reverse breakout roguelite or something like that!