Ricochet Lost Worlds (0)

Overview

Ricochet Lost Worlds is a breakout game developed and published by The game features 15 different power-ups, as well as a very robust level editor in which users can create and share their levels on the Ricochet Lost Worlds also comes with 160 levels of it's own, which involve fluid brick movement, scripted events and even puzzles. Perhaps the most engaging aspect is the game's ring challenge where every level has 5 rings to collect. They are not necessary to move on to the next level, but collecting 35 rings grants an extra life. There are four different environments in Ricochet Lost Worlds, Each of which seem lifelike with features such as swimming fish, cogwheels spinning and smoke emitting from lava. Each environment is embedded with a representation of a pitchfork.

The goal of the game is simply to destroy all bricks on-screen by using batting the "Ion Sphere". Once completed, you can move onto the next level. The player controls a ship with a bat. There are a number of different ship skins the player can chose from within the main menu. The game features a suspend feature, which allows you to exit a level and then resume it when you start the game again. Any unlocked levels can be played at any time in any order. The game also features a fail-safe pause, where should the player leave the game paused for a certain period of time, he will have time to react to what's happening on screen when the game is unpaused, as all the balls are highlighted by a 3-second countdown. Once the countdown is over, the balls have a small acceleration time.

Interactive Main Menu

The game features an interactive main menu, in which a ball will appear and bounce around the boundaries of the menu and destroy the bricks. The bricks generally consist of pictures such as a sailing boat, or a swan. The player can further interact by clicking on the screen which will emit up to four more balls from the center of a teleport exit. There are also a variety of Easter-eggs which can grant different power-ups.

Bricks

There are many different bricks in the game. Most of which are differently patterned one hit bricks, but there are also special bricks. Some only belong to a specific environment. Most/all environments have 3-hit bricks, indestructible bricks, exploding bricks, power-up bricks, bricks that can only be hit from one side and "Deflectors" which are specially shaped bricks which cannot be destroyed by any means.

Underwater

The bricks underwater have a very mystical feel about them. The colours consist of blue, bronze and green. Some bricks have algae on them, whilst explosive bricks have Korean-like symbols on them.

Starfish Goal

The starfish goal is a deflector type of brick. These can only be destroyed by hitting a brick with a starfish attached to it, which will then attach itself to the ball. Once the ball hits a starfish goal, it will diminish. These bricks usually block access to rings or power-ups.

Fish Energy

Fish energy bricks are unique glowing bricks which look very unusual. They take a deformed circle shape, and is the only enviromental specific brick that is larger than the other bricks.

Volcanic

The volcanic environment is like what the name suggests. Volcanic bricks are all black with an orange glow, with standard bricks varying in their pattern. The volcanic environment does not have a 3-hit brick.

Rail Bricks

Rail bricks are bricks that when hit, will rapidly move in a certain direction (As indicated by it's shape) and rail through all bricks it encounters until it either hits the level boundaries, gets destroyed from an explosion or hits a deflector.

Push Rail Bricks

These bricks are just like ordinary rail bricks, except they push bricks they encounter rather than destroying them.

Random Direction Rail Bricks

These are just like normal rail bricks, but will move in a random direction (As indicated by the arrow).

Mayan

The Mayan environment is a theme that resembles the Mayan civilization. The environments and bricks look rather Egyptian-like. The colour scheme consists mostly of shades of tan and dark brown.

Brick Factory

Brick factories are bricks which will generate a specific type of brick when hit. If there are bricks in the way of it, the created bricks will move all bricks in a row or column across. Bricks that hit the level boundary, a shredder or a deflector will be destroyed.

Shredder

The shredder is an indestructible brick that can't be moved, and will destroy bricks that are pushed into it via the brick factory.

Factory Shutdown

The factory shutdown brick will destroy all brick factories on-screen.

Alien

The alien environment is a very mystical environment. The background consists of glowing green lights and strange symbols. All the bricks apart from deflectors in the Alien environment are sphere shaped.

Magnetic Bricks

There are two types of magnetic bricks, which are yellow and blue. These have to be hit to be activated. When two magnetic bricks are activated, they will attract if they're opposite colours, but repel if they are the same. These will destroy any bricks that are in their path.

Ball Generator

The ball generator generates a new ball when it is hit. These can only generate up to five balls.

Other special bricks

Ball Accelerator/Decelerator

These will either speed up, or slow down the ball for a few seconds. The ball passes over these, and they cannot be destroyed by any means.

Teleport Enter/Exit

There are three types of teleport bricks: Red, Green and Blue. When the ball hits a teleport, it will appear out of a teleport exit corresponding to the teleport colour.

Floating Ball

This is a ball that acts like a standard brick, except when hit it will grant the player another ball.

Trapped Balls

These are small versions of the ball which will bounce around freely, but cannot destroy any bricks until bounced off the player ship where they will turn into a normal ball. They are called "Trapped Balls" because they are generally in areas where they can't escape until the player can find a way to release them.

Change Area Bricks

These bricks act like exploding bricks, except when they are hit, they don't destroy bricks but change them into a specific type of brick. These look like the brick they will turn other bricks into, but emit blue sparks to indicate it's a change area brick.

Trigger Bricks

These act just like normal deflectors, only they will have an effect on the bricks such as making new ones appear, making them move away etc.

Power-ups

There are 15 different power-ups within the game. Power-ups can be automatically given to the player when he starts a level (or starts of with a new life) or dropped from power-up bricks. Power-up bricks can give specific power-ups, or random power-ups. Some power-ups are considered "Level breakers" as they can destroy nearly anything.

3-Way Ball Split

The 3-way ball split will grant the player two extra balls which spread out in opposite directions from the center of the main ball.

8-Way Ball Split

It's the same as the 3-way ball split, only it grants the player seven more playing balls.

Acid Ball

When collected, the ball turns into a ball of acid which can dissolve nearly anything.

Ball Catcher

This grants the player ship the ability to catch one ball at a time, which can be released by pressing the left mouse button.

Ball Generator Ball

When collected, the ball will generate a "Trapped ball" whenever it destroys a brick.

Bomb

This drops down rapidly and will destroy the player ship if they hit.

EMP Bomb

When collected, the player can toggle the ball to create an explosion which will destroy any nearby bricks. It needs to bounce of the ship to reload.

Extra Ion Sphere

This grants the player an extra ball.

Fast/Slow

Alters the speed of the ball.

Laser Ball

When collected, the ball will gain the ability to shoot purple coloured shots in a random direction. The shots act as a hit from the ball. Multiple laster ball power-ups can be combined to increase the rate of fire.

Laser Blaster Gun

The laser blaster gun will add guns to the player ship. The left mouse button is used to fire bullets. These can be combined to increase the rate of fire.

Normal Ball/Ship

This returns the ball/ship to it's normal state.

Safety Bumper

This acts as a barrier to stop the ball from falling below the screen. This can be combined to create multiple barriers.

Shield Shrinker

This makes the bat of the ship smaller.

Stinger Missiles

This acts similarly to the laster blaster gun, except it shoots missiles which will lock on to the nearest brick.

Level Editor

The level editor is perhaps the most robust level editor in a breakout game. With the editor, you can assign each brick with a number of different scripts. These range from moving the brick to a point, blending the movement of the brick to two moving points and making the brick orbit a point. These can be combined in a sequence, which can have scripts such as "Send message", "Wait for message" or "Destroy self" after a number of commands. Sequences can be put in sequences, can repeat or stop, and can be combined with movement scripts. Simultaneous movement scripts cannot be combined to a brick, if this does happen, the brick will simply follow the first-in-order command.

Bricks will automatically snap to other bricks, tough the snap collision of many bricks isn't perfect, so it can be hard to perfectly align complex bricks. There are a number of "bricks" which can only be seen in the level editor. These include markers which are invisible to the player and are useful for assigning scripts that can't be broken, and the polygon tool which the player can create a path if he wants bricks to move along it. Paths can also be assigned scripts, which can allow for some very complex movement.

Bricks don't have to me environment specific. Bricks placed onto a level can be copy and pasted onto another level with a different environment.

Starfish Effects and Extra Environments

One of the scripts you can assign to bricks is the type of starfish sprite you want to use (used for starfish goals). Although the intention is for you to select one of four starfish sprites, the development team seems to of accidentally left a list of every sprite image in the game. This was soon discovered months after the release of Ricochet Lost Worlds, as users started uploading round-sets where the bricks have all sorts of effects attached to them. This has since led to some very creative levels. This is something that was never fixed, and has been left in the game for future installments.

The development has also left a list of every environment in the game. This includes the interactive main menu, although this cannot be used as it isn't supported for in-game play, tough it can be used to combine the main menu bricks with other environments. There is also a "Common Background" background which is a plain black background, often used in combination with the starfish effects (which can also be toggled with any environment by changing the game setting or by pressing F5) and there is a "None" which has a few otherwise unplaceable bricks such as the safety bumper.