Colibricks — bricks, balloons, and bricks that shoot back Runs here
1999 · Yann Bonnamy · Mac OS 8 · SheepShaver (Power Macintosh 9500) · 800×600 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
A brick-breaker, and a generous one. Some bricks take several hits. Some release a prize balloon you catch with the paddle. Different balloons do different things and you only learn which by colour. Archer bricks fire arrows that freeze your paddle where it stands.
The first thing it does is show you all of that on a single instructions screen, colour-coded, before you play — which tells you something about how the author thought about it.
Boots Mac OS 8.6 and opens Colibricks on its instructions screen. Read it, then click Play.
Controls
| Mouse | Move the paddle |
| Mouse button | Release the ball, or fire the laser when you have one |
| Space | Nudge the game — but it speeds the ball up each time |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder |
Shareware, distributed freely by its author with a registration menu built in. This copy is unregistered and unmodified.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the Tucows Macintosh archive copy this was built from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Power Macintosh 9500, 800×600 in colour |
|---|---|
| System | Mac OS 8.6, shared with every other title of this era |
| Emulator | SheepShaver, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Saves | Settings and scores persist inside the emulated Mac |
The instructions screen on first run is worth reading rather than clicking past — the balloon colours and the archer bricks are both things you would otherwise learn by losing.
Colibricks does not carry its own operating system; Mac OS 8.6 comes from the shared image, so it starts faster if you have opened another Mac OS 8 title here.
Why it is remembered
It is a late, polished example of a crowded genre. Breakout variants were the most common thing in Macintosh shareware; by 1999 the survivors were the ones that had something specific going on, and Colibricks has the balloons and the archers.
The nudge has a cost. Bumping the game to shake a stuck ball loose is a standard feature; making each nudge permanently speed the ball up is the small design decision that makes it interesting.
Mac shareware was international. Colibricks came out of France, as a great deal of late Mac shareware did, distributed through the same archives as everything else. That ecosystem is most of what this site is preserving.
Getting started
Read the instructions screen. The colour key for the balloons is on it and nowhere else.
Catch balloons selectively. Not all of them are good, and chasing one across the board is a common way to lose the ball you already had.
Resist the nudge. Each one makes the ball permanently faster, and a level you nudged four times is a level you are about to lose.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
It is shareware — freely distributed and fully playable, with the author's registration notice intact.
What do the balloons do?
Different things by colour, and not all of them help. The instructions screen on startup has the key.
What is the nudge for?
Shaking a stuck ball loose. It works, and it permanently speeds the ball up, so use it sparingly.
Is it in colour?
Yes, 800×600 on an emulated Power Macintosh.
Why does it take a while to start?
It boots Mac OS 8.6 first, from the image shared with the other Mac OS 8 titles here.
Who wrote it?
Yann Bonnamy, released as Macintosh shareware in 1999.
Put Colibricks on your own site
Free, no permission needed and no account. Paste this where you want the machine to appear; it brings its own emulator and asks nothing of your page.
<iframe src="https://macemu.com/embed/colibricks/"
width="800" height="600"
style="border:0;max-width:100%"
allowfullscreen
title="Colibricks"></iframe>Sized to this title's real screen. How embedding works.
