Galaxy Breakout

Galaxy Breakout hit my Android phone a little over a week ago and I've been working on a review ever since. Step one was to take a look at the real Arkanoid so I did that last week, and  that step gave me much more appreciation for this game. The goal of Galaxy Breakout is to be 'The best arkanoid style game on the Market!' although why Market is capitalized, but Arkanoid is not I may never know.

Galaxy Breakout starts with that familiar text story trying to explain why you're playing the game. One thing I always find amusing, not that I'm perfect, are the grammatical issues with many games. Just this past week there was a game in the Market that talked about enemy basements. I wanted to reach out and explain that "While the enemy may have a basement, I think you mean 'base'". Here the last line reads "We want to be in silent again" and the last word in the second paragraph is misspelled. Proofread your story or hire me to proofread it. Am I being nitpicky enough? Are you here for the game and not the grammer? Err... grammar.

Once you're done with the intro formalities, Galaxy Breakout dazzles you with a spiffy techno soundtrack. You have the usual menu with options allowing you to adjust the sound, choose among several styles of control, three different languages, and high or low performance hardware. The game also includes a level editor. I really like the flexibility that provides for future playability although it's tough getting people to jump on board the level design bandwagon. Finally, there's the "Arcade" button while probably should be labeled "Play". The "Arcade" button takes you to "Story" which then yields a choice of three planets to conquer, a choice of 4 skill levels, and finally actually game play. I tried the various controls and found the touch screen option to be far superior to tile or DPad mode and I spent most of my time on Kevitan in Novice mode.

Once the game loads you'll see your ship launch. In touch screen mode you tap to release the ball and then drag back and forth on the screen to move. One thing I didn't like was that if I quickly drag to the other side of the screen it does take a split-second for the ship to move on over and catch up to me. This seems to be a conscious design decision as the game has a little triangular tick mark that shows when my finger is versus my on screen ship. I felt that this makes the game a little less smooth than I'd like. I also had occasional issues where the controls seemed to go almost crazy. They were sporadic, but present nonetheless. On the plus side, I do like the curved shape of the ship. It creates a much better feel that if I bounce the ball off a side it's going to be returned at a sharper angle then a head on return. As for a comparison to the game's mentor... first, it uses the whole screen for the display of the game's play field and not a postage stamp (see my Arkandoid review if you don't understand this comment). Next, it has all of the familiar power-ups such as the laser and enlarged shield. Finally, it also has little critters and stuff that invade the screen and must be destroyed.

The graphics in the game are good and the audio is excellent. You can really tell that the developer knows his stuff. The only nagging issue is control. Fortunately there is a trial version of the game in the Market so you can test that out for yourself. As for its Arkanoidness this game is great. 4/5 stars. You can take a look at the game in action below.