Windows Phone Xbox Live Review: Breeze

Breeze Lead

While it's tough for indie games to go noticed on Xbox 360, several of them have constitute new life as Xbox Live titles on Windows Phone. Breeze is the latest game to make the bound. Developed almost entirely past i person – Rob Hutchinson of Nil City Software, Breeze doesn't quite share the scale of nigh other Xbox Alive games. Thankfully it's a complimentary (and advertisement-supported) game, and should get over well with a wide variety of gamers.

A-mazing gameplay

Breeze

Breeze is maze navigation game. While that might conjure images of coin-op classic Pac-Man, Breeze actually shares much more in common with Irritating Stick on PSOne and the obscure Kuru Kuru Kuririn series. Like those games, the object of Breeze is simply to navigate through a series of mazes while avoiding contact with walls and other obstacles. It'due south a simple concept that makes for some occasionally challenging gameplay.

In Cakewalk you play as a bloom, or peradventure the wind that blows the flower around. The goal in each level is ever to reach the checky leave, but sometimes the flower needs to collect varying numbers of sunlight orbs before the exit becomes available. Parts of levels may demand to be opened by touching switches as well.

2 ways to play

Breeze contains 60 levels (and one underground one) divided up amongst the four seasons. Before embarking on the flower'south journeying, you'll need to select a control method: Touch or Tilt. Touch is interesting because rather than touching where you want the flower to go, your finger creates a wind source. Touch on left of the flower and it blows right, etc. Information technology's a lot like inverting both the X and Y axis in a first-person shooter.

Tilt controls, on the other hand, do not capsize the input axes. Tilting the phone to the right moves the flower right, which feels much more natural to me. Of class, stopping the flower in its tracks is a fleck harder than with touch controls since you have to detect the neutral position. While I enjoyed playing with tilt overall, a couple of poorly-conceived opposite levels marred the feel. These levels flip the Y axis but not the Ten axis. Adjusting to the sudden partial reversal is a frustrating experience guaranteed to event in the player's immediate decease at the get-go of these levels. You can't reduce the challenge by switching to affect either, because the game tracks impact and tilt campaign progress separately.

The hard life of a flower

Breeze

Crazy reverse levels bated, Breeze'south challenge comes from a multifariousness of factors. First off, every level has a time limit. While the limit is ordinarily generous, other times information technology forces you to keep moving in order to attain the goal. Wind (unremarkably depicted every bit glowing arrows) and a few instances of varying gravity tin can threaten to smash the flower into walls or obstacles, costing one of the actor'south lives. Glowing vortexes create gravity-based danger equally well, either pushing or pulling at the blossom when information technology nears. Retracting and rotating confined and furnaces that spew fire circular out the list of dangers.

Environmental threats bated, the bloom'southward greatest enemy is momentum. You really accept to manage your speed in order to avoid collisions and flowery death. Somewhat alleviating this is the air brake. It can be used a few times each level to terminate the bloom cold. Early on I barely used the brakes, merely the technique can exist invaluable in the tougher later levels.

Neither the prettiest nor ugliest flower

I mentioned before that Breeze has the potential for mass entreatment. Artistically, it's invitingly generic. Players control a unproblematic, lifeless flower, after all. While the mazes are manus-crafted, non-reality-based designs, they are dotted with outdoor-themed obstacles like trees and baskets. The backgrounds are blurry outdoor photographs which fit the theme but look fairly ugly in practice. How-do-you-do-res, in-focus photos would take produced a more than beautiful await.

Just equally Cakewalk doesn't strive too hard to stand out visually, the sound is purposefully generic besides. A amend word might be banal, though. Unlike previous free Xbox Live games on Windows Phone, this i actually has several unlike tunes. Just all of them (with 1 exception) are so bland, they vest in an elevator. Or peradventure the master recordings belong under the wheels of a bus, if y'all become my drift. The offending tunes come from Partners in Rhyme – a royalty-free music website. Well no wonder they don't want royalties! I usually complain when a game has no music, merely even silence would be preferable to music that no one could peradventure like. That said, I did actually bask the endgame's more than energetic winter tune.

Bannerific

Breeze

Previous advertizing-supported Xbox Live games utilized a vertical screen orientation, with the banner occupying the pinnacle portion of the screen. Since Breeze uses a landscape orientation, the standard banner size doesn't stretch all the way beyond the screen. Nada Metropolis crafted some lovely advertising borders that friction match the current season of the game's levels. The borders brand the advertisements less of an eyesore than usual.

Achievements

Cakewalk is the final Windows Phone game to have only l GamerScore worth of Achievements, as shortly after its release Microsoft decided to give all games (gratuitous or not) the full 200 GS. Of these ten low-paying Achievements, only two should provide whatsoever claiming: 'At that place is no cow level!' and 'Ray of sunlight.' The former requires players to reach the clandestine level, which is tucked abroad in Level 43. The latter is awarded for collecting 100 sunlight orbs in a single play session. Luckily, the undercover level has 150 sunlight orbs to collect, then you won't miss 'Ray' if you become 'Cow.'

Overall Impression

Compared to other Xbox Alive games, Cakewalk would be a hard sell at iii bucks. The uninspired aesthetics and snore-inducing music don't quite attain platform standards. Thankfully it doesn't cost anything, making those complaints much easier to overlook. The maze-navigating gameplay is fun, with short levels perfectly suited to mobile play. All in all, information technology's another fine complimentary Xbox Live game. Hopefully Microsoft keeps them coming!

Breeze requires the Mango update to play. Download the game here from the Marketplace.

QR: Breeze

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