|
This is a one or two player Breakout clone. Things look pretty bleak for mankind in the 25th century. Government control is beginning to crumble under pressure to feed the planet's 40 billion inhabitants on a world where resources are running out. There are savage wars over the resources that remain and the air reeks of death, disease and decay. The good news is that science has discovered a new kind of crystal, Alchemite, that can be refined into any substance known to man. The player takes on the role of a would be rockhopper, a person who mines the remains of nearby systems for this material. Each player has a paddle which moves left / right. The players also have three lives, each life being represented by a ball that rests on their paddle. On the screen are bricks, arranged differently on each level. Some bricks are unbreakable, some break immediately, others after two or more strikes with the ball. The player must fire their ball at the bricks and, when it bounces back, the player must position their paddle to catch their ball causing it to bounce up towards the bricks again. Failure to catch a ball costs a life. When a brick breaks it scores points and sometimes scatters small blue crystals or paddle power-ups. Each brick destroyed and each crystal caught increases the player's score. The objective is to score as many points as possible by clearing all the bricks in a level, collecting the crystals they release in the process, before progressing to the next level. In a two player mode each player's paddle and ball are a different colour. The game installs in both English and German. The shareware game consists of ten levels and the full game has over one hundred. Originally on DOS, it was made freeware when a Windows version titled Powball Deluxe was released. It has several " mods " included, thanks to which we can transform Powball into other classic titles, known to every fan of retrograming, such as Arkanoid or Space Invaders. The Windows version was recompiled to be compatible with Windows 10, and also become freeware. |
