BrickAmpBrickAmp

Two ways to break a brick

BrickAmp ships as two brick-breakers sharing one shelf of levels, and you pick from the title screen.

AMPED is the loud one — fast ball, full pace, the field coming apart in front of you. ZEN takes the same levels and reshapes them onto a narrower, shorter board so the ball's round trip takes longer and the run breathes. It has its own four speed tiers, from Normal up to Expert, and it is still perfectly capable of ending you — calmer is not the same as safe.

Around both sit 100 levels, 16 power-ups, 35 unlockable themes, and Endless and Score Attack waiting once the shelf runs out.

Charge the Smash. Take the whole neighbourhood with it.

Hold to charge the Smash meter and the game shows its work. A live preview traces the exact path the ball will fly, marks the brick it lands on, and lights up every brick that impact will take out alongside it — with a running count of the damage and a rating of OK, GOOD, GREAT or PERFECT.

The rating is the payload. A clean release detonates the full cluster around the impact; a sloppy one spends a charge on the target and a couple of neighbours.

The preview is not a suggestion. It is the same trajectory solve the ball actually flies, drawn before you commit.

Then bring your own music

Own soundtracks on Steam? BrickAmp finds them. Every soundtrack DLC in your Steam library, on any drive (the SD card too, on a Deck), plays in-game with real title and artist tags and its cover art on the HUD. There is no import step and no separate music menu to babysit.

The built-in visualizer runs on live FFT data, not a canned animation loop, and the playfield moves with it. Album art, seek bar and transport controls sit in the side rail, so you can skip a track without leaving the level.

Or skip the library entirely. Leave Spotify, Apple Music or a browser tab playing in the background and BrickAmp taps the system audio directly — live spectrum, now-playing title and artist, cover art and all. Windows, macOS and Steam Deck / Linux alike. Whatever you're already listening to, the board moves with it.

100 levels, filed like records

Level select is a record shelf. The levels are grouped into mini albums with their own cover art, each one paired with the slice of soundtrack that matches its mood — so a run through a shelf plays like a side, not a playlist on shuffle.

Grades and medals

Switch on grades and every level ends in a letter, F through S, measured against score targets built for that level's layout. Score Attack always keeps the grade on. Optional medal challenges sit on top of that: clear it without touching a wall, without dying, under par time, on a combo target, on a coin quota, or without picking up a single power-up.

Sixteen power-ups, and a few are traps

Widen, Shrink, Multiball, Laser, Sticky, Slow, Fast, Extra Life, Fireball, Trishot, Mystery, Bomb, Mortar, Magnet, Splitter, Missile. Grabbing everything that falls is a strategy, not a good one.

Spend what you break

Every brick pays out. Coins buy visual themes from the in-game store — 35 of them, from Midnight and Retro to Vaporwave, Brutalist, Liquid Metal, Glass, Sakura Glass, Arctic, Ember, Terminal, Aurora, Copper, Marble, Blueprint, Candy, Wooden, Obsidian, Tetris and LCD. Each one restyles the whole board, and Album Art repaints it from whatever cover is playing.

Drawn, not stamped

Every brick, ball, trail and particle is drawn on the GPU from scratch each frame, which is why it stays sharp at any resolution instead of blurring on a big display. The Steam Deck is detected automatically at launch and the game is tuned for it. Full gamepad support throughout.

About the soundtrack

The music that ships with the game was composed with AI, and that is worth saying plainly rather than burying. It is a solo project, and a scored one beats a silent one. It is also the part I would most like to hand to somebody better: I am actively looking to work with real artists on what comes next. If you make music and the idea of scoring a shelf of levels appeals to you, write to team@brickamp.com — that door is wide open.

And if none of it is to your taste, that is what the music section is for. Bring your own.

Features

• Two modes on one shelf of levels: AMPED at full pace, ZEN reshaped slower and quieter with four speed tiers
  
• The Smash meter: a previewed trajectory that detonates on impact and takes the surrounding bricks with it
  
• 100 levels, shelved as mini albums with their own cover art and their own slice of the score
  
• Endless and Score Attack for when the shelf runs out
  
• 16 power-ups, several of which are working against you
  
• 35 visual themes, bought with coins you break out of the bricks
  
• Optional F-through-S grading against per-level score targets, plus medal challenges per level
  
• Plays the soundtracks you own on Steam, with title, artist and cover art on the HUD
  
• Live spectrum visualizer driven by real FFT, with album art, seek and transport controls in the rail
  
• System-audio capture on Windows, macOS and Linux: visualize Spotify, Apple Music or a browser tab
  
• Everything in play drawn on the GPU each frame, sharp at any resolution, tuned for Steam Deck
  
• Original soundtrack composed with AI, with real artists wanted for what comes next