Boom Voyage review

I got to play another Breakout clone from Big Fish Games, this time Boom Voyage. This game is a 3d version of the classic breakout where now you also have height added to the whole story. When you destroy a block, the other blocks on top of it will fall down. It has some physics simulation in the game, and so you can cause a bit of a cool scenario where you see a chain reaction of blocks falling and toppling over other structures.


Each level is basically a temple and you guessed it, you have to destroy all the blocks that make up the temple by bouncing the ball around with your paddle. It has some cool powerups but nothing special. I like the nuke though. They have another cool pickup which is automatically spawned when you have the last small bits lying around in the level. It's called Alien Attack and when you pick it up they will clear for you the final pieces to save you some precious time and get on with destroying the next temple :D


Also each set of levels has a theme, e.g. it starts with Egypt, then it continues on what appeared to be in the Roman era, etc.


The game is a bit slow for my tastes so to give myself a challenge I ended up eating the negative powerups too, like speeding up the ball and making the paddle smaller.


The graphics are not so sharp, even the text is a bit blocky. This could be coming from the textures being a bit too small, but maybe its because they wanted to limit the game to a 10meg download. Nevertheless, the breakout gameplay is there.


If you're a Breakout freak, I'd suggest to try it out. The physics give the game a nice touch.

Download Boom Voyage

Peggle Deluxe review

Peggle is a very cool game. Developed by PopCap and distributed by BigFishGames. It's like an evolution on Breakout where instead of having a paddle to at the bottom and you bounce a ball around to break bricks, you basically shoot a ball as a projectile from the top and to pass a level you have to hit all the orange pegs/bricks with just 10 balls. At the bottom of the screen you have a big container going left to right, and if the ball falls in this container, you don't loose the ball you have just shot.


You only shoot one ball at a time, and you then see how the gravity together with some physics will effect the ball to hit the pegs making the level. When the ball goes to the bottom of the screen, the pegs/bricks that you hit are cleared from the screen.



When you're going to hit the last orange peg/brick the game zooms in the action and goes slow motion. Very nice effect. Sometimes you can miss it and you will hear a sigh from a crowd, but if you hit it, it's a feast of eye candy. The ball leaves a colorful trail, a rainbow with cycling colors is splashed on the screen and some powerful classic music (which I believe is used in the eurovision transmission starting theme song) is played. Fireworks are also sent off when the ball deposits itself at the bottom of the screen where an extra bonus is given depending where the ball falls, the middle giving the highest points.




Besides the orange targets and blue pegs (which are just obstacles in the level), there are also green objects which when hit will give you a special power-up depending on the current stage you are in. Examples of power-ups are

• trajectory prediction so you will see where the ball will go after the first bounce,
• multiball where the ball is split into two balls (image in the effect if you hit multiple green objects)
• container extension where the container at the bottom will expand so you don't loose the ball so easily

Later on you will also have moving objects rather static on the screen. There is a nice touch to the controls where you can fastforward a bit the time. So if you have a rotating set of objects, and you want to wait for the objects to get in the right position, you can right click your mouse and you fastforward time. Nice :)




The game is very polished. It is colorful and good for all ages. Very addictive too. My girlfriend didn't want to stop playing it :). The music and sound effects are also excellent. The backgrounds are just right, they give enough color to the level but not distracting - they keep the focus on the objects you should be targeting by not being high-contrast images. I suggest you give it a spin ;)

Download Peggle Deluxe

ArkLight - breakout + shoot'em up

ArkLight is an action game with a combination from Breakout and shoot'em up games. You control this spaceship in a scrolling level, and you have to fire these energy balls that break the blocks in front of you to clear the path. These energy balls will bounce back and you can hit them back with your spaceship to bounce them somewhere else, or you could also direct them towards your ship to recollect them and restore your ship's energy.

It has a very shallow learning curve but addictive gameplay. At first the levels are quite easy but it gets hectic :).

Download ArkLight