Notester82

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Puzzle, Rhythm, Roguelike, SHMUP, and Indie game nerd - Electronic music enthusiast - Hobbyist gamedev - Occasional artist - Abstract and Vectorheart art lover - (Current pfp by CivilDog)


(Alternate Header Ttile: "This game is so fun and addicting that it made me just barely pull an all-nighter playing it the night I discovered it")

Familiar with Arkanoid/Breakout games? Ever wish there was a minimalist, high-octane, score-based one out there? The title screen to BrickBreaker Sprint (Nano). The game's slick, Y2K-esque logo sits at the top of the screen in a black void and there are several clickable white buttons with black text on them, each with icons that convey what they do.

Meet (the demo for BrickBreaker Sprint,) BrickBreaker Sprint (Nano). I miraculously found this game through its Twitter page, which appeared as a suggested account in my "You might like" section (so really, I think this game found me) and decided to give it a whirl since it looked cool, and I'm glad I did!

An in-game screenshot of the "Nano-0" stage. The game looks futuristic with its square font, the player's score in the background, and the array of rectangular, differently-sized bricks on the board. Most of the bricks are white, one is black with a white outline (a wall) and one is pink (the goal brick). A white rectangle with its top corners cut off is on the bottom of the screen and under a white circle, which is about to hit a target brick to spawn the next wave of bricks.

This is an Arkanoid-style game where your goal isn't necessarily to clear every brick, but to try and clear a target brick to immediately spawn the next wave of bricks. You score points by clearing regular bricks (and more from clearing all bricks from one side of the screen), but you score more for advancing to the next wave, and even more for clearing the final wave in a level. You start with There are two modes in BrickBreaker Sprint: Circuit, and the titular Sprint. In Circuit, you try to clear all the waves before time runs out. In Sprint, your goal is to stay alive for 5 minutes while racking up as many points as you can. Clearing the last wave in Sprint mode gives you a point bonus before looping you back to the first wave to do it all over again.

An in-game screenshot of the player clearing all the bricks on the left side of the board (not counting the bricks near the top of the screen) and the text "Left All Clear!" appearing in the background

Seems simple enough, but there's mooooore! There's a bunch of pickups that occasionally fall from destroyed bricks that you can collect. From ball speed/paddle size modifiers, to gaining a Railgun to shoot bricks or a magnet to catch and release the ball at your command, and the elusive Multiball. The ball's speed also increases over time (the rate of speed increasing also changes based on the difficulty you select before playing (and while I haven't played either of them, the highest 2 are so fast and difficult that they give you a 1.5/3.0 score multiplier to compensate for the heckery! Also you only start with one life on these, m-meep)) and it makes balancing between keeping the ball fast enough to (theoretically) clear waves faster, yet slow enough to not lose all of your lives in a heartbeat interesting!

An in-game screenshot of me trying to make the most out of my 06.6 seconds left, blasting away towards a target brick with a Railgun as the ball descends to the bottom of the screen, but is bounced back up thanks to the safety net "Falsewall" pickup I got earlier. Meanwhile, there are two pickups falling down, which are coincidentally another Falsewall and Railgun.

All in all, BrickBreaker Sprint (Nano) is an interesting take on the classic formula of brick-breaking! I love the game's minimalist and futuristic UI, the sound effects are satisfying, and the menu music and in-game music tracks are dope! The game's currently a work-in-progress and more stuff's planned to be added if it gains enough traction, which I hope it does! The game is available here to play in your browser or as a download, happy sprinting!

Oh, and here's a run of me playing the stage Nano-0 in Sprint mode on Daring difficulty (the difficulty right before the 2 crazy "one starting life" ones)! Was grinding like crazy until I went from 252,048pts to 764,004pts! And I finally made it through the 5 minutes without losing all of my lives, Whewwww


You must log in to comment.