Weekly Challenge #19 - Falling Breakout

For this challenge, you need to implement the classical Atari game Breakout with a twist: the bricks must be going down in a way that makes the game fun to play. It's always fascinated me how with so little compute early computer games were able to produce playable.

Winner:

• The winner for $150 is @michael-azogu! The game combines tetris and breakout and is super fun to play. My high score is 570, go try and beat it ;) https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/issues/2

https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/assets/197597/ed957f67-9db7-44a5-8b9d-c6d535af28f9

• In second place with $100 are @nikpundik! When you break a brick, it starts falling down and damages your launchpad. This removes all the downtime while the ball is in the air! https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/issues/1

https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/assets/197597/b79f9596-047b-4940-b2db-2d557f30c458

• In third place for $80 is @Uzo2005! Every few seconds there's another row of bricks that come down, this makes it a lot more challenging to complete the game. https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/issues/3

https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/assets/197597/8a937b0e-9f1e-48e4-99b8-c96c8d4f99ff

• Honorable mention for @nicogs who has been nerd sniped and built a reinforcement learning algorithm to play breakout. Took 18 epochs to finish a level :) https://www.threads.net/@nicogs/post/C7kGTstt-Tf

https://github.com/Algorithm-Arena/weekly-challenge-19-falling-breakout/assets/197597/5b74fa59-9a8f-4131-aed2-330ad69a6fc1

Prizes:

• Winner: $150
• 2nd: $100
• 3rd: $80

Rules:

• The winners will be evaluated based on how creative and interesting the solution is. @vjeux has full discretion on how the winners are selected.
• Multiple people can work on a single submission. If it wins, the reward will be split based on the team preferences.
• If a winner doesn't want to take the money, it'll be reinjected in the next week prize pool.
• The solution must be open sourced.
• There are no restrictions in terms of tech stack.

How to submit a solution:

• Deadline to submit is Sunday May 26th evening at Midnight PST (US West Coast).
• Open an issue on this repo titled "Submission - <Name of your submission>"
• It must contain a short video showing the submission in action
• It must contain an explanation on how to try it
• It must contain a link with the source code