Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure Review

I've played my share of brick breakers, but what I've rarely played are ones that have lore. Sure, you might get some story, but that's usually as an afterthought. Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure puts it right at the forefront, and should you do well enough in each level, you'll unlock logs, newspaper stories, and all sorts!

Set against the backdrop of a dying Earth and humanity's unsteady progress towards the stars, you take control of two spaceships, Greetings and Salutations, which are sent through a strange wormhole seemingly put in place by a long-missing NASA generation ship. The craft are armed with one weapon to use only in defence, lest they accidentally anger whoever is on the other side: a ball.

You control both vessels at once, one stick per ship, and while you can decide which one will launch the ball, that's pretty much all of the controls. On a cooldown, you can launch an ethereal duplicate vessel, which will travel in a straight line and cause the ball to bounce, should it happen to collide with it. It's not the easiest thing to aim…

Actually, there is another weapon in the form of a laser power-up, which will shoot automatically for several seconds. It's just one of the power-ups, but it's the only offensive one. There are others, such as a shield to stop the ball from leaving the area and costing you a life, the steadfast multiball, and ones which change the length of the ship. These effects only apply to whichever catches the item, so sometimes they prove a bit useless, but such is the luck of the draw.

As you play through the story, there are bosses to contend with. The attacks from these (or the enemies in levels which have them) will cause your craft to slow down for a short time, but won't cost you a life. You know, so long as you can keep bouncing the ball. You can mitigate the risk by "firing" your duplicate, but of course, this leaves you open until the cooldown resets.

The pixel graphics look great on the PlayStation Vita, but the text is on the small side. I'm also not a fan of the design of the two pilots, as their faces appear to be caricatures of real people, but the attempt to fit them into the art style of the rest of the game failed.

As well as the story mode, Twin Breaker has some other options: Shooter, Hockey, Catcher, Random, Marathon, and Boss Rush. Each is fun enough, but is there purely to get high scores. That's fine if you're into that, of course, but it's not for me.

Since levels are timed, they never overstay their welcome, and the difficulty curve isn't too steep. Things do get a little intense when you're suddenly using four ships instead of two, but it certainly keeps things interesting.

Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure is available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo Switch.