

Cyrus is the only hope for the Kingdom of Gorudo, which has been attacked by the Devil King and nearly destroyed. The game stars a wizard named Cyrus who practices the magical art of Wizorb, allowing him to transform into a wand that can knock around a blue orb. Wizorb is a game that is built upon these same fundamentals, but which offers the player a bit of extra control over his fate. In this way, the descendants of Breakout are more akin to a form of video pinball, where the player spends most of his time strategizing and attempting to line up a productive shot, while spending the remainder preparing to react to the game’s machinations. Direct interaction occurs less than 10% of the time and the outcomes of these interactions are impossible to precisely predict. What’s interesting about these games from a design perspective is that they each require direct and nearly constant input from the player, yet the player is not in direct control of the primary gameplay object (the ball) for most of the game. Years later, a game based upon this formula – called Arkanoid – surpassed the original by adding new types of bricks, variable brick formations, and powerup capsules.īrick breaking gameplay has persisted throughout the generations with numerous variations on the formula. As with all great successes of the day, the game went on to be cloned and copied and iterated upon many times over. A game by Tribute Games for PC, Mac, Linux, PS3, Vita, Xbox 360, Ouya, iOS, and Switch, originally released in 2011.īrick breaking became its own genre with the 1976 arcade release of Breakout, created in the earliest days of what would eventually become known as the video game industry.
