Rating: 4.5 / 5
Duplenoid puts a new spin on breakout, by hybridizing it with pong. You have two paddles on two sides of the screen, and you control both of them.
Well, the phone can’t really tell if it’s just you controlling both the paddles or you very sneakily recruited your lackey to play the other half of the screen. But in any case, having an extra side to mind, and optionally an extra ball to mind makes the game quite interesting and challenging.It is a fun game, but it is a tad too difficult. Now obviously I am assuming that you are playing with two fingers and two balls, because, face it, otherwise you would rather play some other breakout clone. There is plenty of space on either side of the screen where you would place your fingers, so your view of the play screen is not obscured. However, and I assume this happens with a lot of other people too, subconsciously you would move your finger onto the top of the paddle, because that is what you are controlling. If I may make a suggestion to the developer, could you paint a sort-of controlling mechanism, like a handle of some sort, that reinforces the idea that you can control the paddle from the chrome area of the app?
When I said it was a tad too difficult, I meant that it is a fun and challenging game which requires your full concentration and tests your multitasking abilities. Adding to the complexity are certain features, such as, red tiles cannot be broken by red balls. The very second level has disappearing tiles. There are powerups and power-downs you can collect. There was this one powerup that came very frequently, marked x10. I don’t quite understand what it does. The other appalling thing is that is reduces your score when you miss a ball. I mean… you already made me lose a life, did you really have to rub it in?
There is also a feature, that I didn’t discover in-game, but on the help menu. If you shake the phone, the path of the balls change. In practice, this is not too useful, because you try hard not to shake the phone lest you make a mistake. Once, however, I made a ball pass through a barrier using this feature, so yeah, it is a bit quirky.
This game, like some others I have mentioned before, requires a constant contact of the fingers with the screen, and thus suffers from the sticky finger problem. Or maybe I am just experiencing this more severely because I am currently in a humid part of the world.
To sum up, great little game, has a nice improvement upon pong+breakout by making you mind two balls at once. Is a tad too difficult when you have to mind two balls and two paddles simultaneously. I give it a four-and-a-half.
Download Duplenoid from the Zune Marketplace.
