Its been a fast paced road seeing a new genre of ridiculous upgrades and waves of enemy hordes becoming a Survivors-like but we are starting to see the auto-shooting roguelike ideas spilling out into other genres. Solo developer Axel Born has taken the Survivors-like approach and applied to arcade classic Breakout. For the price of a sandwich you’ve got a fresh spin on a time old high score challenge – and its great.
Breakout is the original bat and ball vs brick game. In this revamp you no longer lose lives by letting the ball slide past your bat, indeed it really doesn’t matter much. Here the bricks come down the screen in waves marching towards your death line and the more that cross it without being smashed, the more your health takes a hit. To help you against the ever increasing brick horde, you have XP drop from some bricks and collecting those with your bat levels up your powers. Its surprising how well this Survivors-like idea translates over.
Upgrades can with add on more health, increase your bat length or your bat and ball speed. Then come the ball upgrades. You can have up to five types of ball generating new balls into the playing area and upgrades add 2 through 5 as well as increase the speed the regenerate. There is no limit to the overall balls in play so you are incentivised to keep as many in play as possible while more are added. Balls come with many unique traits such as double damage, boomerang and targeted balls, ones with explosive area of effect damage or ghost balls that travel through bricks. There are about 12 ball types to unlock through multiple playthrough and you can choose up to five to bring into your arsenal. They all can be levelled up too, although only once each.
Every 5 waves you come across reinforced bricks which are harder to break. This triggers a special upgrade when completed which adds more passive abilities to your playstyle. Add on shields, move the death line down, freeze blocks double the XP gathered – you’ll accrue more as you play and these come in very handy when the game gets very tricky from wave 20 onwards.
There are two modes to play, standard and quick and its the same game but with reduced waves to speed you through the experience. Online leaderboards work for both and they include the loadout and whether you turned on or off certain upgrades from generating or not. This keeps the somewhat random upgrade generation in context when comparing yourself to others.
I found myself really enjoying this small but excellently formed game. Its fast, frantic, visceral and full of choices that matter. Each time I play I find myself inching slightly further up the leaderboards and getting increasingly satisfaction out of the chaos. Seeing a good 20 balls flying around like a blitzkrieg pinball machine is fun and seeing all the bricks quickly fall by the wayside gives you a rush. With mouse controls coming, I think everyone who enjoys arcade classic games will enjoy and get something out of Breakout Survivors. I’m delighted to have picked it up on release.
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