Draw Breaker Review

Draw Breaker is a great twist on the classic Breakout/Arkanoid model of games for touch screen devices. Like the arcade and Atari 2600 models, you still shoot a ball at blocks that fall from the top of the screen, only instead of waving a paddle left to right, you draw your paddle on the screen with your finger.

You’re free to draw your line anywhere on the screen in any direction or angle. This lets you control where the ball is going to bounce off and head towards the blocks you need to break. I like to try to trap the ball in a corner busting every block, but then you’ve got to be quick once the ball breaks free to draw another line before it falls off the screen.

Like any classic breaker game, there are different power-ups. You can get a multi-ball, beginning with three balls, but later in the game multi-ball gets insane, adding four, five and six balls. I kind of lost count and certainly couldn’t keep more than five balls in play at once. You can go into power mode where your balls go on fire smashing through the different blocks.

The blocks themselves get power-ups too. After the basic level one blocks that require either one or three hits to break, you get crazy blocks. Some blocks will burn up the entire row, some will split apart and warp around the screen so you have to keep knocking them. Some bounce your ball like a pinball.

The graphics are bright and colorful, and amusingly cartoony. Well, as animated as you can make blocks and balls. The plot is about a mad scientist who is angry that his square shaped head kept him from wearing a round space helmet, so he’s getting his revenge with all the square blocks he’s created. That’s cute, but also unnecessary. I’m happy to just break blocks for the sake of breaking blocks.

The music is sort of space aged. It’s good, not too distracting, also not vital if you prefer to play with the sound off. Cut screens are okay but I just skip them and get on with playing.

Strategy-wise, you can kill yourself over little details. You’re definitely tempted to draw steep angles or lines high on the screen, but you’ve got to watch the bottom. You can lose lives just as easily with Draw Breaker as you could with Arkanoid and Breakout. Maybe even more easily, since you develop the hubris of leaving the bottom unattended.

Draw Breaker seems like it would be endless fun and frustration. They can always come up with different configurations of different powered blocks that changes the strategy in subtle ways. Each level gets harder so you’re always in for a challenge. Also, it's called Draw Breaker, like Jawbreaker. Get it?

App Store Link: Draw Breaker for iPhone & iPad | By Elevate Entertainment | Price: $0.99/$1.99 | Version: 1.0 | 25.0/47.8 MB | Rating 4+