(the images in this post aren't mine)
As a kid I played this game called Professor Fizzwizzle, it's a cartoony logic-based game about a funny-looking professor traversing dangerous 2D levels without being able to jump, solving puzzles and avoiding aggressive robots.
Some time I ago I looked it up and learned there's Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery, but I don't really know anything about it.
And yesterday I accidentally discovered there was a Breakout type game taking place in the same universe called Fizzball.
In this game Fizzwizzle rescues hungry animals from islands by collecting them inside an expansive bubble. At the start of a level your ball is really small and you can only collect food and butterflies, but the level gets progressively easier as you collect those and move on to animals bigger and bigger. I think this is an interesting mechanic, I've never seen it in any other game of the genre. Your "paddle" also has a fan functionality, allowing you to push the ball towards the upper side of the screen. I previously saw a similar function in Break Quest (also a good game I recommend), except it pulled the ball downwards.