Approachable gameplay

Zala combines the simplicity of breakout with the depth of a rogue-like. You start small, with a paddle, ball, and some bricks to break. Every brick releases coins when broken. You need to catch the coins with your paddle. 

Each coin you catch gets you closer to leveling up. Once the first level is cleared, you'll see a level up screen where you can pick the offered upgrades or not. Some upgrades make the game easier, some help you get more coins by boosting your combo. 

The combo is the number of coins per bricks. It grows by one with every brick you break. Some upgrade will make it grow much faster, but will also add a condition to bring it back to one. Don't be too greedy. 

Speaking of greed, don't drop the ball while chasing coins, you start with just one life.

100+ game changing upgrades, millions of combinations

Some upgrades go really well together, here are some examples of powerful upgrade combinations : 

• Streak (More coins if you break many bricks between paddle bounces) + Soft landing (The paddle repulses balls)

• Fast brick bounce (The ball accelerates after bouncing off a brick) + Fast paddle bounce (The ball accelerates after bouncing off the paddle) + Bullet (The ball shatters through bricks when moving at very high speeds) + The long way (The combo grows twice as fast for bricks destroyed without piercing or explosion)

• Avoid left (More coins if you don't touch the left border) + Avoid right (More coins if you avoid the right border) + Telekinesis (The ball tries to stay above the paddle) + Concave paddle (Balls start the level going straight up).

• Aura (More coins if you don't break bricks above the paddle) + Helium (Gravity limited left and right of paddle)

Scary bosses and mysterious curse bricks

Every four stages, you'll meet a boss. Instead of gold bricks (that give 10x more coins), it will have red bricks (that destroy your combo on touch). It will also have a random curse brick. Curse bricks have a variety of adverse effects. You need to break them to lift the curse. There are 15+ different curse bricks, and the deeper you go in the game, the more you'll encounter them.

1000+ levels from all around the word

The levels are based on  words of many langues of the world. This gives them each unique shapes that make the ball behave in unique ways. They are colored using various palettes and patterns for visual interest.

Current state of the game and roadmap

The game is playable, with mouse, touch, keyboard and controller support. It has basic sounds and no music. The performance is already very good on desktop as the game has been optimized to run smoothly on low end phones. 

Many things are still left to build : 

• wrapping the game with electron to get windows and linux binaries

• steam achievements

• steam leaderboard

• balancing of upgrades

• better high resolution screen support

• music

I also have an endless list of upgrades and curses ideas to add.

I'm hoping to release the full desktop game in 2027.

A mobile version with smaller square levels should go out earlier on android.