Block Breaker Review

I am a child of the 80′s. Therefore, I grew up on simple 2D arcade-style games like Pac-Man, Burger Time, and Kung Fu. During my early childhood in the 80′s my mother owned an arcade and the games in this arcade were my “baby sitters.” The “sitter” I was most fond of during these years was Arkanoid. Luckily, since my mother owned the arcade, I had the keys to the machines or I swear I would have dumped every quarter in a 100 mile radius in that game. Needless to say I was hooked! Eventually the arcade went the way of the Dodo and my mother had to sell the business. Despite not having an arcade as my personal playground anymore I never forgot how much I loved Arkanoid. [ed. note: David did a video review of Block Breaker version 1]

So there I am a three days ago surfing through the App Catalog and I stumbled upon Block Breaker by Invasive Bamboo.  All my childhood memories of  a sweaty old arcade and a dusty Arkanoid machine came flooding back so I didn’t think twice about downloading it. I’m happy to report that the $1.00 (50% off sale) is worth every red cent as this app lives up to its heritage!

Block Breaker is known as a “Breakout” style game in which you have a paddle at the bottom of the screen that you move left or right to try to hit a ball toward blocks at the top of the screen. When the ball makes contact with these blocks they break. If the ball falls past your paddle then you lose a life. Once the ball has broken all the blocks on the screen then you progress to the next level. A very simple concept but trust me when I say that it is one of the most addictive type of games ever created.

In Block Breaker there are three different ways to control your paddle: the accelerometer, the touchscreen, and the keyboard. First up, I have to mention the accelerometer control as it is absolutely awful! Because this option is enabled as a default I almost never played the game again. It literally left such a bad taste in my mouth that I thought this game was junk. However, my love of “Breakout” style games prevailed and I decided to look into the options menu where I found the option to turn off the accelerometer. Once I turned that option off and played the game with touch screen controls I discovered how truly great this app is. The touch controls are a real pleasure to use and make the game very easy to manage. Within an hour I ended up with a sore thumb from all the friction of my thumb on a warm screen. So, once again I did a little more digging and found that this app also has keyboard controls. By pressing the P key you can move your paddle right and pressing the Q sends the paddle left. The keyboard controls are a little sluggish but definitely manageable. Ultimately, for the best experience one must use the touch screen.

One necessity this kind of game needs in order to be good is power-ups. This game delivers on that with eight different types of  power-ups. As you break blocks during play power-ups will fall from the top of the screen. If you move your paddle over them you will acquire that power-up. Some of them do things like make your ball turn into a fireball which wipes out everything in your path while others will take a life from you.

The graphics and level design is where this game really shines. This developer has put all kinds of little touches on this game that really make a difference like little stars in the background shooting by as you play. As the power ups fall they have a little twirling pinwheel on them, although, strangely enough that option is, I believe, turned off by default. The level design in this game is by far my favorite feature. Some levels are obviously thought out to make you work hard to progress to the next level while other levels are designed to look like cartoon characters. Big kudos goes out to this developer for that.

With all the great things about this app there are two minor things I either missed or didn’t really care for. First is the lack of a global leader board.  It is a must for this type of app! I can not understand why this feature has not been included. The music in this game is particularly bad but after 5 minutes you are cutting it off because it just gets old. If the developer had thrown in maybe 3-4 different music tunes it would have made a world of difference in that department. This is such a solid app that these two things really let me down as I expected more to match the awesome gameplay and level design.

Even with the slight problems this game has I still feel that this is the best game of its type that I have played in years. I’m not just talking about on webOS either, I’m talking about every platform out there. The app is really that fun and I am really happy that I purchased it. With a couple tweaks and additions in updates down the road this game could be the perfect “Breakout” style game. So if you love to kill a couple minutes here and there give this awesome app a shot.

Find out more about Block Breaker at appRoundup by clicking here!