Developer: Stephane Valverde
Publisher: Stephane Valverde
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Break my body – Review
The classic Atari Breakout game was revolutionary during its release in the mid-70s. Over the years, plenty of adaptations have been created and nowadays we all know the game by its gameplay experience of breaking all the bricks but not by its name. Break my body is yet another adaptation, but with a twist.
Story
In Break my body, you are assisting Professor Brick who aims to change the medical world. His goal is to eradicate all types of cancer, no small feat in the medical field. Throughout the game, you will see patients and a short summary of their general traits such as age, weight, and gender as well as their illness. These are the people you are trying to help, these are the people you are fighting for. For their lives, for their families, if they have them. But as a medical assistant, you will not know most of it as you take a step back and focus on the problem: breaking all the cancerous cells one by one.
Graphics
Visually, Break my body looks like a childish version of the classic Atari Breakout game, all in favor of the tiny plot of being a medical assistant and going into the human body. The healthy cells are happy pinks, the cancerous cells are worried purples, the vaccinated cells have blue goo around them and so on; each type has their own smiley and color. The user interface area is a different shade of pink, resembling human tissue. It also shows the amount of healthy and cancerous cells there are left, as well as the number of balls, all on the left bottom side. A syringe is displayed on the right bottom side, leaving the top side a bit empty. Animation wise, there’s bits and pieces going on but there’s no overabundance to keep the focus on the ball.
Sound
The soundtrack is a dance-like sound on a constant loop. It doesn’t fit the medical theme, nor does it fit the arcade-like playstyle of a breakout game. Because it’s on a constant loop, it also doesn’t change on crucial moments. It also doesn’t fit the ambiance sound as the bricks pop when you hit them, and the bouncing sounds more like a blob. It’s barely noticeable even with the rhythmic soundtrack. It could have been more immersive. The menu, on the other hand, has an electronic dance song. A narrative voice is also lacking, although that might not be a bad thing.
Gameplay
Break my body is a variation on the classic brick breaking game, with a little twist. In the classic game, you must break all the bricks to advance to the next level which is often a game of patience to break that last brick. As you are a medical assistant, you are now breaking cancerous cells but there are also healthy cells surrounding the cancerous cells. This is where the twist comes in, as you’re not allowed to break all the cells. In fact, if you break all the healthy cells, you have lost so the cancerous cells are your main focus. But while you’re focusing on them, they will infect healthy cells as well so being fast is necessary.
To break down the cells, you use a radioactive ball that you try to guide with your paddle, which is a curved bar of green goo. Emphasis on curved. Moving the paddle left and right can be done with the left and right arrow keys, but also with the mouse. The mouse has a much smoother animation and better reaction time than the arrow keys, but it has its own issues. Moving the paddle too far to the left or right can result in your mouse going into a second screen if you are running a multi-monitor setup. You’re forced to click your way back into the game, and by the time you’ve done this, you’ll have lost the ball and there’s only four per level. This happens when the game is in fullscreen mode strangely enough and it’s simply not a fun experience.
Playing this without a mouse is possible if you disregard the syringe, but the game also offers a mechanic called the magnetic cloud. Releasing this purple cloud from the gooey paddle is done by clicking the left mouse button. It is a simple way to keep the radioactive ball higher up but it’s not simple to guide the ball to a cancerous cell like this.
You can catch drops that fall from destroyed cells and five of these drops will fill up your syringe. To use this syringe, you need to direct your cursor to a group of healthy cells and click on the right mouse button to coat the cells with an antibiotic. The game makes a difference between good and bad drops. There are five good drops that have a variation of colors, and five bad drops that are red. If you know this before going in, you’ll have a good chance of successfully completing the surgery. The good drops range from coating your paddle with glue to sizing up your paddle to creating two additional radioactive balls or even enhancing the destruction power of the ball. The bad drops can shrink your paddle, speed up the ball and even randomize the trajectory of the ball, turning it into an erratic sphere of annoyance. All-in-all, these are not new mechanics, so the game isn’t very original.
A patient can have several zones in the body that you need to treat and each zone has several levels to play in, so there are a plethora of levels to complete but that’s pretty much it in terms of replayability seeing as there are no additional game modes available (unless you count the levels where you do have to aim for the healthy cells). It’s a simple rinse and repeat type of game, with a new type of cells being introduced and patches that direct the movement of the ball.
Conclusion
Break my Body is an interesting take on the classic breakout game by providing a bit of backstory to justify the animated bricks – or in this case cells – and other bodily creatures, but that is also where it stops. The positive and negative drops aren’t groundbreaking mechanics, the sound design doesn’t fit the theme very well and the gameplay experience could use some polishing as both the arrow keys as well as the mouse have their issues. It’s an average game, good for a few minutes of gameplay per session but not something you would play non-stop from start to finish.
Break my body – Review,
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