- Lots of different vampire enemies
- Totems that you can switch out
- Feels like a twist on Pong and Break Out
If you're a fan of arcade classics, then Fangs Breaker will feel like a breath of fresh air with a bunch of classic concepts. It's sort of like Pong, but also like Break Out, with a twist of neon colours and vampires too!
In Fangs Breaker, you are playing a totem that's very much like a Pong paddle. However, your character automatically moves towards the ball (or bulb of garlic) when it bounces towards the left-hand side of the screen.
You can tap to hold down and stay in place or release to jump, allowing you to control your movement a bit. A lot of catching the ball comes down to timing! If you do grab the ball, you can then see an arrow coming off from you, which shows where your bulb is going to blast off.
Coming towards you in Fangs Breaker are a bunch of blocks, with many of them being vampires! There are a few different types of blocks from barriers that you cannot break by hitting them to vampires with their own powers, which will affect your bulb.
When you successfully hit a block on the vampire side of the screen, everything there is pushed back a bit, so it's not coming towards the middle line. If you defeat vampires, you will need to suck them up with your bulb, which grows a combination zone around it each time you hit something, but this can hit a max amount.
If that max is hit and left for too long, it will then crash the bulb, making you need to reset.
Some vampires need to be sucked up by the bulb only, just like the blockers, which becomes a whole other thing. When you use your combo to suck up things, you then need to refresh them to continue to use it, so again, you'll need to manage your moves and your time. It just feels like there is a lot to keep track of, but once you are playing, everything smoothly weaves together.
The levels are endless, but due to your push being limited, eventually, everything will catch up to you, and you will be overpowered. You can break open crystals during the level and gain points to level up your totem's power between levels. These different crystals break into totem parts, which you can then swap on your totem.
They each have different stats, which can change how your bulb works or how much push-back you have, for example. The added height is also a plus! Some of the level bonuses add perks that further change your stats, regardless of what totems you have on, so there is plenty to unlock.
Fangs Breaker has a big "one more go" feel between the levels. I quite like how neon and colourful it all is too! There is a good variety of enemies, and it does feel like an extremely polished take on Pong and Break Out, creating something that feels so fun in such a different way.
Fangs Breaker review - "A familiar-feeling twist"
Fangs Breaker is a fantastic arcade game that feels like a new concept, buried in some old genres! There is plenty to unlock, lots of totems to customise, and many vampires to take on.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley