From indie developer Greater Good Games comes its debut title Break Blocks. The concept of the game is an original idea that sees your addictive block breaking puzzle game fused together with a rhythm based style of gaming that would see you tapping away to the beat as you would while playing Guitar Hero.
The story of Break Blocks follows you, an untrained young break dancer with the skills to become one of the best, however to get there you have to beat 13 of the world’s greatest dancers along the way in one-on-one dance battles. To beat your opponent you must fight for the crowds love by busting-a-move which can be done by breaking coloured blocks.
Every time you break a section of blocks you bring out the dance moves, the more blocks you break the more intense the moves get and the better chance you’ll have of winning over the crowd to beat your opponent. The blocks are built with the arrow keys tapping them in time to the beat, and are then placed on the dance floor surrounding you. A good tip is not to just collect groups of the primary colours you start with (red, blue and yellow) but to join them up with the white blocks and secondary coloured blocks (purple, orange and green) to bridge groups together and make you perform the major dance moves that can help win you the dance-off.
The game itself is really easy to get in to, thanks to the simple controls and the great tutorial that gets you started. That said it is a difficult game to master because for a simple game there is so much going on with all the keeping in rhythm of the music, building blocks, keeping an eye on how the crowd is reacting and trying to work out where the best place to put your blocks is. I found my eyes going fuzzy after a while too, because of staring at the screen for so long with all the flashing colours and trying to concentrate on what I was doing. But the game has a lot to offer which is great.
It doesn’t only have a storyline mode either, you can select free-play or challenge mode as well allowing you to battle all your enemies to 25 musical tracks composed especially for the game unlocking special achievements for beating certain challenges. There is also a multiplayer mode, unfortunately I had problems trying to play it, but when working it should allow you to challenge friends and others online to mark your place on the leader board as one of the greatest break dancers on the planet. The game also boasts the ability to build your own songs into the game, but once again I was unable to do this so was a little let down, but that could just be me not trying hard enough to find out how to do it.
Additional praise should go to the game design as the games animated graphics and characters are great. They are bright, colourful, brilliantly designed and with each character having its own voice it gives them a personality that makes them stand out.
Overall however this game wasn’t really to my personal taste. Nevertheless that is not to say that I wasn’t impressed by it. The originality of the game with its unique twist on a classic style makes it stand out from the usual block breaking puzzle games you find around. Also the especially composed music for the game is catchy and upbeat and something you will surely find yourself dancing to in real life as well as the game. Therefore I believe Break Blocks is sure to become a very popular and highly addictive game for those gamers who enjoy their action-puzzle games.
Joshua Maddox: Review Break Blocks; From Dayle: Technical Director,
“Thank you for posting that review and taking the time to notify me about it. I believe a 3/5 is a fair score for the game, particularly given that it’s not your type of game =)”
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
