Neon Bricks
a brick breaker that plays itself in space

What you see on every new tab

Neon Bricks is a ball-and-brick breaker that plays itself across the New Tab page. A green glowing ball with a short trail bounces between a wall of rounded neon bricks in the upper half of the screen and a paddle along the bottom edge, over a dark blue-violet starfield.

There are no lives and no game over. Miss the ball and a new one sits on the paddle about a second later. Clear a wall and the paddle catches the ball and holds it while the next wall pops into place, top rows first, over about two seconds.

• Six walls: A ringed planet with a small moon, a heart, a woven diagonal pattern, a fortress with steel battlements, nested diamonds and a band of waves. Each tab opens on a random one, and the same wall never comes twice in a row.
• Tough bricks: Grey steel bricks take two hits and turn pale after the first. Some coloured bricks wear a dark armour plate, a few of them two, peeling off one hit at a time.
• Bombs: Every wall hides four dark bricks with a pulsing red-orange core. Break one and it blows out its eight neighbours, and bombs caught in the blast set each other off.
• Power-ups: About one broken brick in thirteen drops a capsule: FIREBALL makes the ball a comet that burns through bricks for 10 seconds, SATELLITES puts two small moons in orbit around it for 10 seconds, and SAUCER sends a flying saucer under the wall, zapping bricks.
• Score: A six-digit pixel score in the top-left corner: 10 points per layer knocked off, 50 for catching a capsule and 100 for hitting the saucer with the ball.

Every brick, shard, capsule, the ball, the paddle and even the score digits are one shape: a glowing rounded rectangle, drawn in a single batch by one shader. A second shader paints three layers of stars drifting down past two faint nebula clouds.

What it reacts to

• Mouse: Move the cursor and the paddle follows it, turning from cyan to pink. Keep the mouse still for three seconds, or leave the page, and the autopilot takes it back.
• Music: With music sync on, bass brightens every glow, a kick makes the whole wall swell for an instant, and treble brightens the stars.
• Night: After dusk on Auto, the core dims the scene with a dark indigo veil; the Day/Night button can force either.

Free or Pro?Pro

Ambient New Tab is free to install, with five free themes. Neon Bricks is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancel anytime, or $59 once for Pro Forever, and it unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as we release it. You can preview Neon Bricks full screen before you buy: open the Themes panel and rest your mouse on it. Changed your mind? 14-day refund, no questions.

How to get it

1. Add Ambient New Tab to Chrome.
2. Open a new tab and click the Themes pill in the bottom-right corner.
3. Pick Neon Bricks. Done.

Questions

Can the ball get stuck bouncing without hitting anything?

No. The ball is never allowed to travel nearly flat or straight up and down, and if 14 seconds pass without a brick being hit it curves gently toward the nearest one. It also speeds up, by as much as a quarter, as the wall empties.

Is Neon Bricks free?

It is a Pro theme. Pro is $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancel anytime, or $59 once for Pro Forever. It unlocks every Pro theme, music sync, and every new theme as it is released.

How does the autopilot decide where to hit?

It predicts where the ball will reach the paddle, picks a brick still standing and meets the ball off-centre so the bounce heads that way, with a little deliberate scatter. It goes after a falling capsule only when it can still get back under the ball in time.

Do power-ups carry over to the next wall?

No. Clearing a wall ends every effect at once: the fireball goes out, the satellites vanish, the saucer flies off and any falling capsules disappear, so each new wall starts clean.

Does it work on my phone?

No. It's a desktop browser extension for Chrome on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. If you're reading this on a phone, send yourself the link.

More themes

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