Nurium Games presents BreakQuest, a whole new game experience based in the classic Arkanoid.

Visit us at:
www.nurium.com (http://www.nurium.com)
www.breakquest.com (http://www.breakquest.com)


- Enjoy 100 unique scenes.
- Feel the full physics engine.
- Look at spectacular 16 million color graphics.
- Flow with the music of 'Maniacs of Noise'.
- Discover never seen before power ups.
- In quest mode defeat the evil empire 'Azimut Total Business'.
- In Arcade mode set up the game as you like.


- You can download a beta now.
- Final version should be ready this summer.


Fèlix Casablancas
www.nurium.com

This game is really really cool. In fact, it could be the coolest breakout game I have ever played.

...but it has flaws. The two biggest complaints I have are that you have capped the speed of the paddle, and that often the effects really make it hard to follow the ball.

The graphics are very good, but a notch below the top games in this genre.

But the physics and innovation are wonderful :)

Very cool!

Is this written with something like Tomakak, or did you do your own physics engine. Either way, I love the ideas you've put into this one.

I haven't checked out the game yet, but just a quick comment regarding your webpage: pull some of the technical jargon from your marketing copy. Phrases like "arbitrary shaped objects" and "advanced particle system" are shooting over the heads of much of your audience, in my opinion. Then again, that's coming from more of a causal game developer's perspective, so take it with a grain of salt...

Nice breakout game. It's really refreshing. Though in level 3 with the hanging blocks, it took way too long for me, but nice touch with the power ups appearing after a level took too long. I acutally like the retro look more then the 3d pre-rendered look of Richochet. I think you got a winner.

Is there any difference in selecting different ships?
How many levels in the beta? I stopped playing once it recycled back to the ying yangs.

The mouse felt way to slow, and not as responsive as the keyboard.

Thank you for your comments.

Questions for you:
- Do you think it's too hard or too easy.
- Do you like the paddle speed limit.

Reply mix:

The game uses a physics engine:
http://home.iae.nl/users/starcat/dynamo/

Due to the nature of the calculations, if you use a physics engine, you have to limit the paddle speed, in fact nothing can go too fast or the system could go out of control.

Anyway, my girlfriend (that never played an Arkanoid, nor any other computer game before) likes this speed limit, when she tried others, the paddle will go too fast for her.

I've removed a lot of technical jargon from my site, but i'll remove more. How would you say that 'objects can be arbitrary shaped'.

There are four levels in the beta.

There is a 'mouse speed' parameter in the options menu. The game plays much better with the mouse, at least everyone that tried it here prefered the mouse over the keyboard.

Fèlix Casablancas
www.nurium.com

It seems that some mouses in some computer will go veeeery slow.

I'll take a look at that.

Very nice breakout game. Lots to like.

Maniacs of Noise?? Yay! :)

I also was very pleasantly happy with the direction that this game has taken. It strikes me as very interesting and innovative.

My complaints run about the same as others...

I need to be able to move the paddle faster. There is no reason to do a multi-ball b/c the paddle doesn't move fast enough left to right.

Some of the collisions seem off. When the ball hits the bricks on the third board it often bounces in directions that seem incorrect. In addition the ball interaction with the paddle at the edges and when the ball approaches the paddle at an angle closer to vertical also seems to cause strange results.

Overall it is a nice breath of air for an arkanoid game.

You can now download beta 1.03. If fixes some mouse speed problems, that made the paddle ssslllooowww with some computers/mouses.

Also max paddle speed is quite bigger.

If you downloaded a previous version and had speed problems, please try this version and tell me if it feels better (post here or send me a mail at info@nurium.com)

BreakQuest Beta 1.03 (http://www.nurium.com/getbeta.php)

Thank you.

Loved it! :)

I agree some of the graphics (mainly the ship) could be cleaned up a bit. Im not sure I agree with the ship moving to slow, it seemed ok to me.

Everything ran smoothly, I had a little slow down on the level with the spring ladders but it didnt hamper gameplay.

It did crash on me though. It crashed about half way through the level that looks the same as the first level (or did it look and it was the first level?). I was playing in Fullscreen/Sound mode. I did not get any dialogs or anything, it just exited without a trace.

Some basic specs:
P4 1.7
512 MB Ram
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 w/Dual Monitors
Soundblaster Audigy

Overall, a great game!! Good job!

-=ben

Originally posted by 3dben
Loved it!

Im not sure I agree with the ship moving to slow, it seemed ok to me.

It did crash on me though. It crashed about half way through the level that looks the same as the first level (or did it look and it was the first level?). I was playing in Fullscreen/Sound mode. I did not get any dialogs or anything, it just exited without a trace.

Some basic specs:
P4 1.7
512 MB Ram
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 w/Dual Monitors
Soundblaster Audigy


I'm very happy that you like it.

About the ship movement, this seems fixed if new beta version (1.03) and didn't happen with all computers.

It should not crash!. It's been running in two computers for a week with no crashes. (keeps running now)

There is a file called 'log.txt' in the game directory. Please, colud you send it to me: info@nurium.com

Specs are fine. Maybe old drivers (DirectX).

What windows version are you using?

The demo has 4 scenes, when you finish the last, you return to the first one.

Fèlix Casablancas
www.nurium.com

At first I was quite quick in dismissing it as YABC (Yet another Breakout Clone), but the arbitrarily shaped bricks and realistic physics makes for a very interesting game.. congratulations!

If I must critisize, the paddle is not to my tastes (one of those pointless gfx critisisms I know :)) and the ball sometimes takes ages to return if it's travelling almost horizontally. How about giving it a little gravitiy.. perhaps kicking in after a while i.e. gets heavier until hit again by the paddle?

Otherwise, it's a very polished product! Keep up the good stuff!

Hi Fèlix,

Wow, congrats on making something really new and innovative. I was amazed and delighted at how different each level was! Superb.

I think you've got some flaws though which is stopping it being truly great. Let me talk just about the first level, the one with the ying yang symbols, but there were different problems with the later levels too.

#1 Problem - Nothing breaks! For me the fun in a break-out game is that you're smashing stuff, and the more stuff you can smash the better. But the ying-yangs don't break, they don't even damage! IMHO you're missing the #1 reward factor here - I'll be honest with you, despite all your amazing levels, I got bored.

#2 Problem - Confusing! What are the flowers doing? What do all the pills do? What power-up have I just picked up? (The text should be over the bat rather than to one side). What's this red dot which is exploding, where did that come from? These are just a few of the thoughts that went through my head anyway.

Lovely and amazingly unique game though! Nice one!

Gavin

Originally posted by Gavin Buttimore
#1 Problem - Nothing breaks! For me the fun in a break-out game is that you're smashing stuff, and the more stuff you can smash the better. But the ying-yangs don't break, they don't even damage! IMHO you're missing the #1 reward factor here - I'll be honest with you, despite all your amazing levels, I got bored.

#2 Problem - Confusing! What are the flowers doing? What do all the pills do? What power-up have I just picked up? (The text should be over the bat rather than to one side). What's this red dot which is exploding, where did that come from? These are just a few of the thoughts that went through my head anyway.

Lovely and amazingly unique game though! Nice one!


Oh! nothing breaking, that's true. At least in the beta. Most of the scenes have bricks that explode, in all sorts of ways, there are even fireworks.

But I didn't realized that none of the scenes that I put on the beta had these explossions.

Well, I think the flowers add value to gameplay as they will sometimes disturb the path of the ball, so you need more reflexes than without them. Note that the Ying Yang level is a quite easy one.

Nice point, I'll add an option to put the pill text over the paddle, or in the left corner.

The red dot is a mine that comes from the mine launcher that comes from a pill... Well I'll add some sort of 'real time explanations' in the final version.


Response to other posts:
- Is there any difference in selecting different ships?

Yes, but veeeery subtle. The ship shape is different, so when the ball hits it (i.e. with the bumper off) bounces differently.

- The paddle is not to my tastes.

10 or more to chooose in the final final version, hope would like one.

- Ball sometimes takes ages to return.

In the later beta versions, the ball redirects itself a little up or down (very subtle) when it's too horizontal, but sometimes it's inevitable.


I appreciate all the feedback.


Fèlix Casablancas
www.nurium.com

Well, get a second opinion by all means, but for my vote, levels like the ying-yang one where nothing breaks or explode are boring and should either be ditched or fixed up.

I think my problem with the flowers is that you don't expect a ball hitting a flower to rebound off it - it violates player expectations... a ball would naturally crush the flower so why not do that and give the player some score... a nice bit of extra reward.

Without going into a list there were other times where I thought the visuals could have clued the player in better, e.g. in the second level you have to hit the white blocks once but the black blocks twice but there's no clue to that. I mean, check out the superb "Rebound: Lost Worlds" (as I'm sure you already have) - you can tell how many times you have to hit the block just by looking at it.

Try the text over the bat and if it works (it works well in Rebound) do it I reckon... don't bother with an option, that's lazy design.

All the best,
Gavin

The yin-yangs definitely shouldn't come first, IMO - there was a distinct feeling of "Nothing's happening... should something be happening? What do I do?" upon hitting them, until eventually they started falling.

It was the hanging bricks that really got my attention and made me nudge my other half to look at this cool game I'm playing, might want to move those up?

Definitely wasn't sure what the flowers were doing - do I get more points if I bat these things around? The score is far enough away and subtle enough that I couldn't keep an eye on it while playing, so I was *never* sure what things earned me points.