Dreamstones

A very satisfying game to play in small chunks. The trappings are pleasant - the pixel art and music combine to make a groovy experience while clearing boards, and the progression in buying upgrades and levelling up your town is a well paced distraction, with there usually being one or two things to buy after each successful clear and a handful of further upgrades visible on the horizon. There is a bit of RPG style progression that makes stages slightly easier as you go - levelling up and buying weapons to defeat monsters in each level with fewer hits, passive skill loadouts that give you some customisation options, and active skills to fire off. Make no mistake, however - this game is about breaking bricks with your paddle, and you will not trivialise that by levelling. There are only a few monsters that your attack stat effects, the passive skills are very minor (IE a 5% chance to resurrect if you lose your ball), and the active skills share a fairly long cooldown so you'll only be using them 2-5 times a screen at most. There are several reviews hyping up / complaining about the difficulty, and it's true that the game is not a breeze. There are also several complaints about the game's physics or behaviour, and those you have to take with a grain of salt. We've all gotten some dodgy bounces, but the game is internally consistent and hitting the same pixel with your ball will result in the same bounce. It seems to be something you either get used to or you don't. All in all, I'd recommend this game - not for multi hour play sessions, but 15 minutes here and there will keep you coming back. Some tips to maximise your enjoyment: -Move your paddle smoothly. Weird bounces off your paddle can occur if you try and snap at the last second. -Keep your cursor off the bottom of the screen and just move your mouse left and right - you don't need the extra visual noise of your cursor on the playing field. -If you're having trouble keeping track of the ball, turn up the volume or put on headphones - the audio is distinct enough to tell you when you're bouncing and what you're bouncing off of. This should help you quickly locate your ball if you lose it. -The fireball active skill can help you bypass certain tricky shots as the explosion "pierces" one level of block - you can sometimes hit a TNT brick located behind an unbreakable one and open up the field that way.

This is an Arkanoid-style block-breaker game with progression mechanics. Graphics: cartoonish and OK for what it is. Story: nothing special. The game attempts to keep things interesting but if the story were to go away, I don't think that I'd miss it. Gameplay: progression can be grindy, though early on you get to unlock at least one thing (i.e. build one building, get one item from the shop) per map, so it's OK. Physics (as mentioned in many other reviews) can be a bit wonky where it counts - yes, occasionally you will see a hit that you swear should have saved the ball knock it into the pit instead. Powerups are varied and fun. Some enemy projectiles can destroy the paddle, which is super-annoying and anxiety-inducing. It's not just the difficulty of it, there's also the trap doors (basically ball teleporters) that have cost me tons of lives, and yet with them, it always feels like its my fault for not paying enough attention. Overall? This is a very flawed game, but it's a perfectly nice way to spend some time. On several occasions, I found myself feeling like levels made me tired instead of relaxed, but I can't really not recommend Dreamstones if you like block-breakers.

refreshing

Fun Arkanoid style game

https://youtu.be/M_0wCG8g0C8?si=ZaD3f0oBLy7xUL-U

Overall i'd say the game is great - nice variety of enemies, blocks, environment traps and skills. The artstyle is nice and diverse from one area to the next. The main problem is the difficulty that stems from a few design flaws. Like the other reviews said, this game has some problems with physics - ball bouncing in unintended direction and such. Skill/powerup system is nice, but some active skills have an insanely long cooldowns (2-3min). This would not be a big problem in it of itself, but because cooldown time is shared between all active skills, if you use a skill with a long cooldown, you cant use any other skills that may have shorter ones. If you like hard games, maybe to the point it feels unfair, you will like this game. And if you don't want it being hard i'd recommend downloading cheat engine and using speedhack function to drop down the speed to something like 0.7 . It will take longer to finish the game, and some active skills will be almost unusable due to long cooldown, but at least it will be manageable. P.S. I only play this game when listening to podcasts / twitch streams (cause it would be quite boring without them) and I also paid only 3$ for this, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Really nice and classic block breaker game, I won this game in a giveaway. This is the best block breaker game I have played so far, it took me 23.5 hours to complete it. Some of its features that separates it from other block breaker games- 1. Nice Story line. 2. The way the system measure your progress(build and upgrade buildings, levels completed, monsters hunted,etc). 3. Hunting monsters with a ball. 4. Passive and Active skills. 5. Level up system. 6. Monster hunting achievement System. 7.Weapon System. Cons- 1. FPS drops. 2. Had to farm gold for 3 to 5 hours to complete the game.