Developer: Blue Sunset Games

Publisher: Blue Sunset Games

Platform: Nintendo Switch (eShop)

Category: Arcade, Puzzle, Action & Other

Release Date: April 26, 2018 (EU & NA)

If you’re looking for a breakout-like game, you might want to set your sights on Glaive: Break Breaker. Developed and brought to the Switch eShop by Blue Sunset Games, Glaive: Break Breaker is a classic arkanoid-type puzzle game that marks the developer’s first home console game, as their previous titles saw life as PC and mobile games.

In Glaive: Break Breaker, you control a ship called the Glaive and there is a yellow ball that hits the Glaive and then hits the squared shaped blocks. The game also has power-ups to help you through the levels even the hard ones. Power-ups consist of: Faster Ball, Slower Ball, Glaive Expand, Glaive Slow Down, Glaive Speed Up, Glaive Shrink, Additional Ball, Big Ball, Glue Ball, Extra Life, Extra Safety, Rocket Shot and Ultra Ball.

There are two modes Arcade and Versus. In Arcade you play through different stages there up to 125 different stages in the game and in Versus you can play with a friend using the Joy-Con, While most puzzle games start off easy and then proceed to get harder, but this game started off hard right off the bat. I struggled alot trying to complete stage 6 because I wasn’t just controlling one Glaive, but two.

Although it took me a while to beat stage 6, and by “a while,” I mean by 2 weeks to beat it. There are also different levels that require you to either hit all the blocks or hit 3 blue boxes to complete the level, which I felt was too early in the game for me to even have a stage of that difficulty. Also in Glaive: Break Breaker, there is a way to indicate the difficulty of any stage via colors, which are light green (Easy), Burnt Orange (Medium) and Red (Hard).

As far as visuals go, Glaive: Break Breaker looks good for a classic game and does a decent job of having that 90’s feel, complete with bright colors. The music on the other hand, not so much. I felt the music was too high tense, which is not needed in an arkanoid-type puzzle game and was kind of distracting when playing through levels.

With regards to controls, they are easy and simple, as I had no problem controlling one or two Glaive since I was playing mostly in handheld mode. I did however play it while docked it was nice but didn’t feel like the type of game that needed to be played docked. As far as issues go, the only one I really encountered, was a freezing glitch that occurred on two occasions I pressed the home menu button on the Nintendo Switch.. Other than that and the difficulty spike, Glaive: Break Breaker plays and performs pretty well.

Conclusion:

Overall, I felt that Glaive: Brick Breaker, is a great game but a rushed one because it feels like it is missing something that most puzzle games have, which is a variety of modes. If there were more modes to it, it would have been better because it would allow players to have even more different ways of playing the game and options to choose from. Also, the level difficulty at the beginning of the game is a huge issue because a stage like stage 6, shouldn’t have taken me no more than maybe 4-5 tries before completing but instead took a full 2 weeks, like I said previously.

Last but not least the music. I felt the soundtrack was too upbeat for the type of game and found it to be so distracting at times that I had to turn the volume all the way down to concentrate on completing the level. Besides all that, Glaive: Break Breaker is a good game to play if you are looking for something to pass the time, or just looking for something new to play.