Tiny Breakers Camp

It has a decent foundation, but for now I find two things excessively frustrating : 1) The paddle needs to move faster. I know it's for balance purposes, but you can adjust balance without making the player's experience irritating. 2) The fact that the duplicate balls cause damage to you and yours is really dumb.

a pretty fun twist on a brickbreaker game. my only complaints are that it is a little buggy and the classes & powerups don't really feel that impactful

Pretty, and the core loop concept is alright - but the implementation is absolutely braindead. Levels are the same, and the approach to each level is precisely the same, regardless of the class you have, enemies present, the allies you can summon, and the spells you get. Lazy design as it is.

The core gameplay revolves around breaking blocks. You control a paddle at the bottom of the screen and use it to bounce a ball upward toward the enemy and the boxes protecting them. Various destructible objects are scattered around the field. Some require multiple hits to break, while others act as invincible obstacles. The objective is not to destroy everything but to break through the defenses and damage the enemy wall, removing all its health before they do the same to you. Each time you lose a ball at the bottom, your wall takes damage. The paddle mechanics are not particularly polished, and the ball’s bounces can feel inconsistent. In most games of this genre, the side or angle of the paddle that the ball hits determines its trajectory. Here, however, the behavior often feels random. For example, the ball might approach from the left, hit the left side of the paddle, and instead of bouncing back left, it continues moving to the right as if nothing changed. Many losses happen because the ball travels in a completely different direction than expected. At other times it gets stuck in shallow angles, bouncing left and right while barely moving up or down. Destroyed objects have a chance of dropping several types of items. The most common are gems and coins, which serve as the game’s currency and carry over between missions for upgrades. Secondary drops include colored cards and stars that charge your spell meter, which triggers a random effect when activated. Since items fall downward, you need to catch them with your paddle, although you may have to let some go if the ball is close to falling off the screen. Every object you destroy also fills your experience bar. Once it is full, you can choose between healing, restoring your special attack, or gaining extra coins and gems. If you have collected enough currency during the mission, you can also purchase one of four spells that activate immediately. These might summon mercenaries to assist with attacks, add an extra ball to speed up destruction, or increase your luck, which improves the chances of items dropping from destroyed boxes. Enemies have their own spells as well. They can spawn additional boxes, heal themselves, or summon enemies that fire projectiles toward you. These projectiles must be blocked with your paddle. However, the paddle cannot block repeatedly without pause, as its defense needs time to recharge after each hit. The main game mode is a campaign where you complete missions to unlock new ones and gradually progress across the map. Each mission contains several stages with varying difficulty, and you must clear all of them in a single run to finish the mission. Completing missions rewards you with new spells, helpers, and skills for your three heroes. You can tackle missions with any of the heroes, the knight, the witch, or the rogue. While the core gameplay remains the same, each hero has distinct perks. The rogue can inflict poison and grant helpers faster attack speed, while the witch can cast more spells during a game and extend their duration. Each hero also has a large set of perks that can be unlocked with the gems and coins earned from missions. However, many of these upgrades remain locked until you buy the availalbe perks, which unlocks the next pack. Another drawback is that you only receive currency if you successfully complete a stage. Losing yields no rewards, which can lead to frustrating grinding on easier levels. Aside from the inconsistent ball control, much of the difficulty comes from unbreakable obstacles. Higher stage difficulties introduce more of them, and they are often placed in ways that require lucky bounces for the ball to slip through. This can work in your favor as well, since the ball might ricochet off obstacles and strike the enemy wall for heavy damage before returning. However, some stages rely too heavily on this randomness. If you do not get a favorable bounce early on, enemy spells will eventually overwhelm you. Because spells are cast in a fixed order, stages that include enemy spawns can quickly spiral out of control, making it impossible to block all incoming projectiles.

cool, great on steam deck.

As long as you don't go in over-expecting, you should get at least a few hours of entertainment from this. It's a brick breaker - nothing that will revolutionize the genre outside of a nice RPG theme. Gameplay can get hectic when you have multiple spells going, and multiballs can backfire as a result. Other than that, challenge was low. A good way to get into the Breakout/Arkanoid genre if you don't want to stick to the basics.