I played the very first Breakout game released by Atari in 1976. You'd find me spending my 10p’s and Deutsche Marks in my local NAFFI or Toc H club while serving in the armed forces, stationed in Germany. I've loved breakout/arkanoids (named after the game arkanoid released by Taito in 1986) ever since. You’d also find the original Asteroids and Space Invaders alongside the Breakout cabinet (unless you were playing the sit-down versions). I played all three regularly, but breakout was my personal favorite; though all three games influenced my arcade tastes significantly for many years to come. I rarely touched any other genre until the platformers Gish (Chronic Logic 2004), Wik & the Fable of Soul's (Reflexive Entertainment (2004) and Marble Blast Gold (Garage Games 2002). In fact, the only arcade genres I played for the next 20 years until 2004 - 6 were either breakouts or shmup's apart from Marble Blast Gold which I purchased in 2002.
I came across Anoix by accident a few days ago while reading some game reviews on one of the game sites I visit regularly, where I discovered it was on sale here on Steam. As soon as I realized it was a breakout game I purchased it immediately (despite having promised my partner that I wouldn’t purchase any more games via Steam for the foreseeable future (due to her discovering the staggering amount I'd spent on games over the past several years, which amounted to over £40K/$52K).
Circular breakouts are very rare (* see end of review for another), and thankfully I wasn't disappointed with Anoix. It’s not amongst the best breakout games I’ve played, but good enough to keep me entertained for short periods; which is how I usually play most arcade games; basically as 'coffee breaks' in between playing more in-depth and more interesting/challenging AAA games.
The game is well made with some excellent level designs; some of which I found ingenious and very hard to beat. I’ve played circular arkanoid/breakouts in the past and still have a couple that still play on the latest operating systems (despite being over a decade old) and which have been firm favorites of mine for many years; namely X-Bound aka Plastic Balls, which is also still available to play for free via various flash sites and another round breakout called Break-In, which I purchased from the now defunct Reflexive Arcade about 13 years ago. There are a couple available via Steam still (*see end of review).
The main difference between Anoix and the two mentioned above is that it's a 3D version of the game. Sadly, most 3D breakouts are very easy compared to 2D breakouts, apart from maybe Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires; however, because of the circular design, Anoix is not as easy as other 3D breakouts. You must guard the whole circumference of the circle against losing your ball as opposed to most breakout games that have only one side of a rectangle or square to protect. This design makes it much easier to lose a ball if you don’t anticipate or at least approximate where the ball is going to go. This is compounded by stacked blocks that fall randomly when hit , platforms that give you more than one level to hit, plus different shaped blocks some of which are mobile that make it more difficult to anticipate where the ball is going to bounce (unless you are a pool/snooker expert), plus there are ramps and TNT blocks (that explode) and throw the ball into the air. One clever design I’ve never seen in a breakout before is the ability of the bat to be able to jump (automatically) into the air to catch such balls, so long as you’ve moved to the correct place on the boundary. I'd like to see a manual mode for this automatic response, which would add increased difficulty to the game for those who consider themselves experts.
As with most breakouts, you also get various power ups such as speed or slow balls, bat size increased or decreased, and shields to stop the ball from escaping the arena. The only things missing for me were a level editor and the ability to add your own music (though that is easily remedied by turning off the games music and playing your own.
The other difference I liked was each level has three lives and three star ratings, (i.e. 1, 2 & 3 stars), for each life you lose you lose a star, if you lose all three you have to start the level again; however, on starting a new level you regain all three stars even if you lost two in the previous level.
I would definitely recommend Anoix to all breakout/arkanoid fans.
Other breakouts I’d personally recommend that are still available via Steam include:
• Shatter
• Powball: Renaissance
• Ionball 2: Ionstorm
• Caromble
• Magical Brickout (another circular breakout)
Sadly, two of the better breakouts that were available on Steam, i.e. Ricochet Infinity and Reaxxion were removed some time ago :(
