Advanced guide
The game is very simple to grasp, but a number of tricks are required to unlock all the achievements.
Maximize your score
Your score relies greatly on long combo chains. When your combo chain reaches 10, the score from each block are maximized. To reach the highest scores, a chain of 30 to 40 hits unlocks a huge amount of points as well as the clear bonus.
To build long chains, back-hits are important. When the ball hits the paddle from the rear, the combo chain is not reset. Back-hits are hard to do because of the reversed rotation and the aiming depends on where the ball hits the paddle.
Each time the ball bounces, it speeds up a little. When a combo chain is reset, the ball loses half the speed it built during the combo. The ball can the be very fast during a combo chain, but revert back to a reasonable speed after an aimed shot compared to if only aimed shot were done.
Mastering aimed shot and back-hits are the key to keep the ball at a reduced speed as well as building your score quickly.
Clearing the hardest levels
The difficulty increases with each level, but nothing happens by random in Block Around. Each element has a predictable behavior, once you have understood it, you will be able to play with it to avoid hazardous situations.
In arcade mode, you can unlock extra lives by achieving a given score. To clear the worlds without using continues, you can take risks in the first levels to practice your aiming and back-hits and unlock those extra lives before reaching more difficult levels. That way you will have more room when it is too difficult while not boring yourself out of the first levels.
Each level has multiple zones to build combo chains without having key blocks. When starting of after losing a ball, you can search where to start and with which angle to quickly build a combo chain before aiming for a key, and find a way through the level.
Advanced play
The game can be played with two keys: launch and aim. To reach the highest scores (and such avoid using continues), some tricks has to be mastered.
Flippings are the key for back-hitting. They consist in going through the aiming arrow quickly to flip the paddle on a short distance. Flips can be achieved by placing the paddle slightly away and aiming the impact area to reach it while flipping.
Fine aiming can be done with the rotation keys. The aiming arrow is very convenient for front-hits, but is of little use for back-hits. The rotation keys allows you to modify your angle without having to move. Some people prefers fine aiming versus arrow-aiming, but they are much slower and may not be enough to catch the ball at the last moment.
Far aiming helps to clear a level, for example, mostly when the ball is too fast to aim precisely. Place the aiming arrow on your target (like the warp gate) and hold the aim button while moving around. If the level is rather clear of obstacles between the ball and the objective, it will reach it after a few bounces.
Pressing is rather difficult but helps to finely control a slow ball. Pressing is about hitting the ball in the same direction that it is going. For the press to succeed, you'll have to move the paddle not too fast to prevent disabling the collision and hit the ball outside the center of the paddle. Otherwise the collision won't happen and the ball will pass through.
Challenge guide
There are multiple ways to reach the score required to complete a challenge. Like building a very long combo chain to increase the score very quickly before clearing the level or aiming carefully for every single block to get the maximum clear bonus. The following guide uses mostly the first method.