This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Twitch Action Games, Crazy, Cool, or Kusoge. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Taito created Arkanoid, which was perhaps the first game to properly reinvent Atari’s classic paddle-and-ball brick busting game Breakout. And with the exception of the Arkanoid titles, we’ve never played a clone that quite captured the same level of magic. Storybird’s Space Buster
($1) tries to duplicate Arkanoid, and does well enough at its current asking price to be worthy of your attention, but even after several point releases continues to demonstrate the gap between professional and budding game developers.
Space Buster has all of the prerequisites—simple touch-based control of your paddle, a collection of power-ups that expand or shrink your paddle, create multiballs, or even add lasers to blast bricks—and now includes a little background music, 55 different levels, and particle-like brick exploding effects. But you lose your power-ups after every stage, and it’s missing compelling level designs; there are some stages that feel utterly boring until and unless you hit a multiball to start destroying three or four bricks at once. So far, neither this nor Break Classic really seems to have gotten the formula perfect, but we’d put them in generally the same league; we’d pick Break Classic for the more interesting art and graphics engine, but Space Buster is currently good enough to merit our flat B rating. iLounge Rating: B.
Our Rating
Company and Price
Company: Storybird
Website: www.storybird.mobi/
Title: Space Buster
Price: $1
Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches
