It is a Breakout clone; the player controls paddles along the screen's edge to knock a bouncing ball, Kirby, into destructible bricks.

Kirby's Block Ball was released in Japan on December 14, 1995, later in North America on May 13, 1996, and finally in Europe on August 29, 1996.

Reviewers considered the game an improvement on the Breakout formula and praised its gameplay craftsmanship and incorporation of the Kirby series.

The player controls paddles along the screen's edges to knock a bouncing ball, Kirby, into destructible bricks.

Each of the game's eleven stages include five rounds of increasingly complex block patterns for Kirby to clear.

With the stone, needle, flame, and spark Copy Abilities, Kirby can transform to interact with blocks differently.

[1] IGN wrote that the game was primarily remembered as "an Arkanoid or Breakout clone skinned with the Kirby franchise".

They considered Kirby's Block Ball an improvement upon Alleyway, a Game Boy launch title and Breakout clone.

[5][18] Alternatively, Kirby's Block Ball received the lowest rating on Tim Rogers's 2004 "Yamanote Scoring System for Portable Games" (a metric by which he played a game while counting stops on the circular Yamanote train line until he lost interest) with a score of "one" stop.

The magazine also liked how the game fit the Kirby universe, apart from its increased difficulty—Jeuxvideo.com occasionally had trouble hitting the slow-paced ball with precision.