Magical Brickout Review

Back in July I previewed Magical Brickout, and I didn’t like it a huge amount. I had trouble with the central mechanic and it honestly left me feeling quite nauseated. I ended my preview saying I probably wouldn’t go back to this when the final level packs launch, yet here we are, so let’s see what’s changed.

Firstly, all of my complaints about the Early Access version of Magical Brickout are still present: the ball bounces oddly and because of the nature of the circular arena the balls can be lost long before they go out of bounds. The ball, I believe, seems to bounce oddly because the collision detection is not very good; this works sometimes but other times causes the ball to seem to slide through a brick instead of bouncing off of it. I didn’t notice this the first time around, but it was very prevalent in the version I played now.

I have new issues too, this time with the power-ups. There are some that are supposed to help you and some that are supposed to be bad, but they’re all an easy way to give you a bad time. Notable candidates for “The worst power-up 2016” include the one that freezes bricks around it, making them temporarily disappear and the slow motion power-up that sounds like it would be great except it somehow makes the collision even more janky. The negative power ups are one of my biggest issues with the game purely because hitting them doesn’t always make them go away, so you can’t clear a brick to help make the bricks behind it easier to get.

The story is still as flimsy as I remember it, a loose collection of comics and introductory text to explain the background art. The art itself is really pretty, but it gets covered up quickly with what would be usually a complimentary design, except you have to spin the arena so it immediately gets spoilt. The text is written in a font that isn’t especially easy on the eye in yellow on black so it’s almost painful to read and the level preamble happens every time the level loads, which takes forever. You can kind of skip it by rapidly pressing spacebar, but it still takes far too long to get back into a level after failing.

The only other new feature, aside from the now-completed story, is a randomly spawning goblin in non-boss levels which can be hit by the ball though it has no collision physics and appears behind the bricks. I don’t believe you get anything for hitting all of them, and the game certainly doesn’t give me any reason to collect them all outside getting an achievement, and I don’t like this game enough to want to expend the time needed to 100% it.

I didn’t like Magical Brickout after the last time I played it, and I definitely do not like it anymore now. It’s gone from being a cool idea to being a frustrating game to play, and one that I needed a brief break away from before being able to finish it. With better collision physics and a toning down of the power-ups, this game could have been much better but as it stands I wouldn’t recommend playing this one.