Well I’m told this is ‘#1 Ice-Smashing Game’. Apparently. All those other Ice-Smashing games are nowhere near as good as this one, the Number 1, the daddy of all Ice-Smashing Games. Righhhhhhhhht…
I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t expecting much. For every A+ big budget mobile game (as the big softcos are taking mobile platforms quite seriously now), there’s 10 games churned out by bedroom coders looking to make a quick buck, usually trying out their newly-developed coding skills on the iTunes-surfing public. Now and then though, a game comes along to turn the head of the most jaded of Angry Birds fans.
The arrow denotes the bomb's direction
So Amazing Breaker. If you’re itching for a way to make hours slip away, (with an iPhone or iPod Touch)read on. Much like the aforementioned Angry Birds, your projectiles are launched as there targets, and…that’s where the similarity ends really. Played vertically rather than horizontally, your projectiles are of the bomb variety. There are a few types on offer here; bombs than split into 3, bombs that leave mini-bombs when you tap on the screen, and bombs that you can control (kinda) on their path. Their target is a telephone, house, flower etc. made of, er…ice. (Aha!) You are given some bombs at the start of the level, and you must use them to smash 90% of the target to finish the level.
On the bottom left show bomb queue, and the type
The first 7 or 8 levels are just there to allow you to get comfortable with the game and the types of bombs, but from here on it gets a bit tricky. For example, each level gives you a pre-determined numner and types of bombs, although on some levels a number of bombs can be added to your ‘bomb stash’ if you can reach them. One thing you can do though is press the ‘bomb swap’ button (just under the bomb queue) which swaps the current bomb with the first in the queue. Handy. (Hint: the green ‘split bombs’ don’t explode on their own; you need to follow them with a red, ‘normal’ bomb, which will explode itself and any green bombs in it’s reach (which will in turn blow up – in this way you can make quite a chain of explosions – nice)) In this way you can scatter bombs all over the target, and lighting the fuse with a red bomb, before the level becomes a mass of conflagration.
It’s at about level 9 that the seeds of Amazing Breaker begin to bloom, but before you realise this you’re replaying level 10 again and again, trying different strategies so that you can ignite a chain of bombs and get to the next one. Recursion? You betcha.
Amazing Breaker’s graphics won’t knock out, but they’re oozing quiet confidence. There’s plenty of small graphic touches and colour use which show use this is put together by no bedroom newbie. That goes for the sounds, although the background muzak, there for the few levels, seems to go missing later on.
The game is available in both free and paid for versions, the free version does well to whet the appetite for more (after 18 levels), and 69 pence gives you more, which is fine ‘n dandy when considering that it’s eaten plenty of my time! The free version is over soon enough (which I guess it fair enough) so I guess one might wonder about of the paid version, but then for this sort of money you can’t really go wrong.