We as humans just love to destroy things, don’t we? I don’t mean this in a deeply philosophical way, just simply that we love to smash things. It’s satisfying, and EVERYONE loves doing it. From being a baby and smashing a Lego tower your dad took an hour to build, to going round a friend’s house to help him destroy old furniture. Smashing shit is amazing. So, when this translates well into a video game, its a win-win, yeah? Most of the time, yes. As much fun as it is to smash and destroy things in a video game, there either need to be some other elements to that game, or the mechanics of the destruction need to be top-notch. Drawkanoid tries to accomplish the latter, and for a while (short while that is) it does.
Drawkanoid is a modern take on the famed brick-breaking genre. There are so many variations of this retro-inspired genre available now, with many of them free, that it takes something special to stand out amongst the crowd. Drawkanoid attempts to achieve this in a few ways, and some of them work really well. The issue, however, is that as fun as Drawkanoid can be, it generally becomes repetitive extremely quickly. This isn’t always an issue because these types of games are really made to be played in short bursts.
Drawkanoid is incredibly simple to play. You have to hit/rebound a ball up and make it break blocks and other objects. Instead of having a permanent paddle, you move to rebound the ball, you draw one. This is a brilliant innovation as it allows you to send the ball flying off in trajectories that would be impossible to achieve with a traditional flat paddle. You will also notice that when the ball/object is flying down to the bottom of the screen, time slows down. Yep, we have bullet time in a brick-breaker game, but this is a bit of a double-edged sword.
The slowing down of time does allow you to think about where to rebound the ball back, but it also makes Drawkanoid rather easy. There will only be a handful of moments during your time with Drawkanoid where you’ll miss hitting the ball back, and the few times that does happen will just be from overthinking about where to draw the paddle.
The neon design of Drawkanoid is visually stunning, and each level does look fantastic, even if these levels can last just a few seconds once you really master the block-breaking. There are power-ups to unlock through gold you win from your performances, which help keep the game somewhat fresh as you progress to the later stages. Other power-ups include making your paddle bigger and having the bosses you’ll come across drop more gold than usual. It is fun to keep swapping these abilities out, and if you find yourself stuck on a particular stage, a change in the power-ups can bring instant success.
Developer: QCF
Publisher: QCF
Platform: PC
Release Date: 21st January 2020
