Caromble! by Crimson Owl Studios
Is there a more “classic” video game design than the brick-breaker? Building off the foundation laid by Pong, games like Breakout and Arkanoid took the arcade world by storm through a simple combination of a paddle, a ball, and bricks to smash. It’s a formula that just works, and remains as addictive as it ever has been.
Caromble! by first-time developer Crimson Owl Studios is seemingly built on one question: just how much craziness can we inject into this genre?
Turns out that the answer is a lot.
Hit the Bricks
Aliens have descended to Earth and are destroying everything. As a race of benevolent creatures called Arkotrons, your goal is simple: stop them by using ball-and-paddle powers to smash everything that threatens the planet.
Caromble! wears its arcade influences on its sleeve and doesn’t mess with a good formula. You have a paddle that you use to hit a ball at breakable objects. There are power-ups to collect that enhance your paddle, as well as ones to dodge that will make your life harder. Smash all the bricks, defeat a boss, move on to the next level. So far, so standard.
Of course, this is before it starts introducing new powers for you to unlock, some of which occasionally take the game into entirely different arcade styles like shooters or pinball. Not to mention the stage hazards quickly ramp up, with things like conveyor belts and switch puzzles soon complicating things.
I was consistently impressed and delighted with just how far the developers chose to stretch what a basic brick-breaker could do, and never got tired of seeing what insanity they threw at me next. This is even before you get into the alternate modes like Daily Challenge and Skill Levels, etc.
Bricked Up
Caromble!’s presentation is commendable as well. The interconnected stages give the entire thing a feeling of something truly epic, and the soundtrack is suitably pulse-pounding as well.
I have few complaints overall about Caromble!, but there is a notable one in terms of some decisions regarding difficulty. For starters, the arenas you play on are frequently quite small, making the game feel especially punishing at times when you barely have a split second to catch your ball.
This would be forgivable on its own, but the game has a weird approach to lives. Upon exhausting your three lives, the game gives you the option to continue while losing your ability to place on the leaderboards. Fair enough. However, by default, choosing this only gives you a single additional life, and if you lose that, you restart the entire level.
It feels like a strange approach when perhaps simply allowing the player to go into a “free play” mode would be more enjoyable for people struggling. You CAN adjust the number of extra tries you get in the options menu all the way up to 99, but its default setting feels almost pointless.
The Verdict
Caromble! is an “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to the simple brick-breaker that is tremendous fun and full to bursting with content. Even though I think the difficulty might be a bit over-tuned, you’ll still be hard-pressed to find a modern arcade game with this much variety, and I commend it for that.
Caromble! is available via Steam and GOG.
Watch the trailer for Caromble! below:
