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Review: Blitz Breaker – retro-styled, gravity-defying platform action game hits iOS

Super-challenging, but easy to pick up short-levelled platformer arrives on iOS

Price: $2.99 / £2.29
Version: 1.0.0
Size: 43.8 MB
Platform: iPhone & iPad

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After launching on the PC back in February, this slice of highly-tuned, pacey, but very simple platform action has finally arrived on iOS. Be prepared to have a lot of fun as you pile through a tonne of speedy-short levels that get harder and harder as you progress. While it’s touted as a platform game, arcade-inclined gaming fans will find the action is very much suited to the pick-up-and-play type crowd. Easy to play, hard to master.

In this regard we happy with the contradiction of saying it’s simple and challenging at the same time – the game doesn’t keep throwing new controls at you – it’s pure one-thumb gaming. However, the challenge is real and it ratchets up fast, boss levels in particular will take a lot of respawning to finally get to the next stage.

Swipe in the direction you want your little guy to go, but a word of warning, he won't stop until he hits something!

Swipe in the direction you want your little guy to go, but a word of warning, he won’t stop until he hits something!

Despite this, it’s rarely frustrating in the same way other challenging games can be, which is the levels are short, sharp, bite-sized pieces of gravity-defying platform action that don’t require you to traverse parts of a huge level over and over again just to reach that challenging bit where you tend to always fall down. In Blitz Breaker, you’ll have to restart the level a lot, but you won’t have to start from a beginning that seems so far away each time.

There's plenty of obstacles and objects to acquire along the way

There’s plenty of obstacles and objects to acquire along the way

In this regard, Blitz Breaker is a platform game that uses mobile gaming puzzle aesthetics to contain the action. It’s also non-traditional in its controls, there is a jump function but you’ll rarely use it, instead smashing fast and hard up, down, sideways, and off of obstacles to get where you need to go. It’s massively challenging, but also a great deal of fun.

The design is pure retro; blocky, pixelated, but the controls are highly responsive and fluid. Its pacing is as fast as the processor on the device it’s designed for, even if its graphics hark back to a far older era. The influences are relatively clear – on one hand we see Megaman-style platform aesthetics of old, with iOS-influenced speed and simplicity similar to the kind of games fellow iPhone developer Nitrome puts out – we’re talking the likes of Gunbrick and Ultimate Briefcase here.

The game finds some innovative ways to include level 'bosses' which are particularly challenging

The game finds some innovative ways to include level ‘bosses’ which are particularly challenging

Your thumb will wear out quickly which means you can’t play for very long at a time, but its challenges, and short-bursts of fun give it a certain level of longevity that makes it very much worth the asking price.