“BREAKER” by Daniel Linssen, Martin Kvale & Dubmood.
“[A] blend of [“Breakout”], [“Space Invaders”] and [“Ikaruga”.]”
Once I had the pleasure to talk on the German-French television channel ARTE about minimalistic game design and why minimalism does not automatically mean simplicity, and “BREAKER” is a fantastic example to state this point once again. In this bullet hell arcade game, you cannot shoot directly at your enemies. In fact, you cannot do anything besides moving either clockwise or counter-clockwise. By moving in one or the other direction, your paddle spaceship will change its color into red or blue. With a red vessel, you can reflect red bullets of your enemies, and with a blue vessel of course the blue ones. Of course you will get hurt by blue projectiles in your red form and vice versa.
The groups of enemies will grow larger as you progress and so you will have to dodge attacks from many sides. While the ordinary fiends just shoot off one color, the mini bosses do not. By figuring out their patterns and with fast thinking you will learn how to react in a proper way, before they can just shoot you down. That makes “BREAKER” not only a clever, but also captivating game with a high replayability value in my books. [PLAY]
