Tri Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Odyssey Review
Like many people, Tetris was my first Game Boy game (Was it bundled? Were there bundles?). My favorite game though was Alleyway. Fun fact: it is a Mario game; he is the little guy who jumps into the paddle at the very beginning. I only finished the game within the past few years, probably because the original Game Boy had no save function but more likely due to battery/lighting issues (IFKYK). From 1989 to the present, Alleyway clones (technically Breakout since Alleyway is a clone itself but I digress), have been a comfort food game for me. It is that peacefulness of the ball just bouncing back and forth between brick and paddle (Alleyway had no music outside of the bonus levels so all you heard was the sound effects when the ball struck). My original Game Boy still works but has been set aside for the Analogue Pocket with USB charging capabilities, backlit screen, and save functions but Alleyway plays just as well on both machines. One of the best “clones” was 2020’s Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure. It had that classic brick-breaking gameplay with a modern flair and a great story. Guess what just got a sequel?
Developed by Lillymo Games, Tri Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Odyssey is brick-breaking cranked to 11 with a generous helping of time travel shenanigans. Colin and Chris return, forced out of retirement, after saving the world, but this duo is now a trio, with Dustin joining our heroes (for those unaware, Colin and Chris are Colin Moriarty and Chris Ray Gun of Sacred Symbols: A PlayStation Podcast, which makes Dustin, Dustin Furman, their producer). This ain’t your parent’s brick-breaker game though (oh shit! I am the parent now…)
For those Alleyway/Breakout veterans, you know you launch the ball and use the paddle to break all the bricks in each level. It is single player pong. If you played Twin Breakers, you know there is one major difference. Yes, you hit the ball with the paddle but now you have two (2!) paddles and each one is controlled independently (for story purposes, the paddles are spaceships controlled by Colin and Chris). Well, Tri Breakers needed to up the ante so now, you also control the ball itself (Dustin’s ship) with your trigger buttons. To recap, you control two paddles AND the ball at the same time. In practice though, it is easy to pull off although there are cases of tunnel vision. Several times I would just be going back and forth between a set of bricks and then suddenly the ball would head towards my other paddle but I would move the wrong one and lose a life. Similar to the previous game, each level has power-ups that mostly aid you although some can be a hindrance. The newest one is fuel which is needed for control of the ball. While it does replenish over time, if your fuel gauge hits zero, the ball just travels based on how it was hit and you can not alter the direction. Multi-ball can lead to some chaos as you suddenly remember you can control two paddles and hit two balls at the same time.
Alleyway was only 32 levels long but could, admittedly, get quite boring as it was just hitting the ball and destroying all bricks to move on to the next level. Tri Breaker alleviates that by mixing it up, a lot. Sometimes, you play with one paddle, and sometimes with two. There are levels where Dustin is missing so no ball control. Other levels just feature Dustin. Yes, you control just the ball. There are even variants of classic games like Galaga, Jackal (only my 2nd favorite game ever), and Snake (raise your hand if you had a Nokia phone). There are 40 levels in total but the variety makes the game feel significantly longer. Plus, every level has a bonus mission to complete as well as a grading system based on several factors like lives lost (or gained), time spent, or points earned.
Alleyway or Breakout or just any old brick-breaking game fans can eat well this holiday season. Tri Breaker was an absolute treat to play through. On normal difficulty, you are looking at around a three (3) hour completion but, for the brave souls, a hard difficulty awaits. Trophy hunters are looking at even more time as you need to achieve S rankings on all levels plus completion of the missions on both difficulties (unknown if hard completion awards both at this time). It is rare to find brick-breaker games with more to offer than just brick-breaking but now we have two in the genre that add in their own interesting mechanics and high-quality writing and story-telling.
