Break
Arcade Artistry · 2022 · Action, Indie, FPS, Retro, Shooter
PC
7 user reviews71% · 7
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About Break
I made this as a tribute to my childhood, to all those classic FPS games that I grew up playing like Doom and Quake. I wanted to bring back the feeling of playing those games that I had when I was a kid. I'm just one guy and I'm a programmer not an artist, so I had to rely a lot on open source graphics and sound. But I think if you look past that, you'll find a pretty cool little game.
Break is a classic fast paced retro FPS with a custom 2.5D style engine similar to Doom or the Build Engine. It has about 24 non-secret levels, 7 weapons, and a built in editor. The editor is pretty cool, I spent a lot of time refining it. It has a custom scripting language which is intentionally similar to ZDoom's scripting language (and Megazeux's scripting language) to make the transition from ZDoom to Break easy for existing users of ZDoom and GZDoom.
I designed Break so that people could build their own cool stuff with it. Everything was designed around simplicity and ease of use with a focus on making custom content easily. Break follows a minimalistic philosophy compared to something like ZDoom. I tried to keep everything minimalistic so that it would be as easy as possible to make custom content for.
I included a lot of quality of life features for creating custom content like easy importing and exporting of maps, incredibly simple file formats, insanely easy texture importing, a what you see is what you get style editor, and so on. Break also has a unique layers system that allows for a kind of 2.75D level design. It has some support for slopes, fences/middles, and lighting, but I tried to keep everything as simple and minimalistic as possible to make all this stuff super easy to use.
Whenever I played Doom as a kid, I always wanted a built in editor that was fun and easy to use instead of complex and difficult like most level editors were back then. In Break, I tried to create the kind of editor that I always wanted as a kid.
I didn't want to just throw together another Doom clone. If you really care about those old games, you don't want just another clone. I think you want something lovingly handcrafted. That's why I built a totally custom engine from scratch. This is a game for people who like handcrafted products. I think there is something beautiful in the imperfections that handcrafting something introduces. Maybe handcrafted products are more human that way.
This is a game for people who dream about going back to the glory days of Doom and Quake, for people who miss the good old days, for people who want to try to resurrect the past, at least a little. I hope you'll give it a try. It may be a little rough around the edges, but it's a good game, and if you love classic FPS games, then I think you'll like Break too.
Break is a classic fast paced retro FPS with a custom 2.5D style engine similar to Doom or the Build Engine. It has about 24 non-secret levels, 7 weapons, and a built in editor. The editor is pretty cool, I spent a lot of time refining it. It has a custom scripting language which is intentionally similar to ZDoom's scripting language (and Megazeux's scripting language) to make the transition from ZDoom to Break easy for existing users of ZDoom and GZDoom.
I designed Break so that people could build their own cool stuff with it. Everything was designed around simplicity and ease of use with a focus on making custom content easily. Break follows a minimalistic philosophy compared to something like ZDoom. I tried to keep everything minimalistic so that it would be as easy as possible to make custom content for.
I included a lot of quality of life features for creating custom content like easy importing and exporting of maps, incredibly simple file formats, insanely easy texture importing, a what you see is what you get style editor, and so on. Break also has a unique layers system that allows for a kind of 2.75D level design. It has some support for slopes, fences/middles, and lighting, but I tried to keep everything as simple and minimalistic as possible to make all this stuff super easy to use.
Whenever I played Doom as a kid, I always wanted a built in editor that was fun and easy to use instead of complex and difficult like most level editors were back then. In Break, I tried to create the kind of editor that I always wanted as a kid.
I didn't want to just throw together another Doom clone. If you really care about those old games, you don't want just another clone. I think you want something lovingly handcrafted. That's why I built a totally custom engine from scratch. This is a game for people who like handcrafted products. I think there is something beautiful in the imperfections that handcrafting something introduces. Maybe handcrafted products are more human that way.
This is a game for people who dream about going back to the glory days of Doom and Quake, for people who miss the good old days, for people who want to try to resurrect the past, at least a little. I hope you'll give it a try. It may be a little rough around the edges, but it's a good game, and if you love classic FPS games, then I think you'll like Break too.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Break is a game designed like a classic 90's boomer-shooter but with little to none of the qualities that made those games great. Positives: + The game is bright and colourful + Several enemies are quite cute in design + Little to no bugs encountered + For the most part, difficulty is okay Negatives: - Several enemies either hit like a truck or chip barely any health off you - Enemies accuracy is wonky - A good chunk of levels are surprisingly VERY linear despite how non-linear they first appear - Most sound effects feel either really inferiour to what you'd expect or are just outright missing (no enemies go "oww" when shot?) - Sadly, the music tracks being just 8-Bit feel really flat and most of the time have a sort of "buzz" to them, which after a while really grates the ears (as in lots of sawtooth waves, not sine waves) - The only weapon that is actually worth using, the shotgun, is poorly implemented. One moment you one-shot an enemy point blank and another time it takes nearly 3 times the amount of shots? Sadly, I cannot recommend anyone play this game.6 found this helpful
Love this game. I've put in a bunch of hours. There are some very clever secrets, enemy placement, and level concepts. Some day I'll unlock the strategy of beating Level One in under 45 seconds. Some day!5 found this helpful
Please check, one great game, my kids and I love it.3 found this helpful
Feels like quake and doom, with serviceable level design. The pacing on the levels was good, and some of the later levels (lvl 11+) really opened up. The map aesthetics, however are not good at all. Everything looks very samey. Lots of weird texture choices. Just everything visually is off. The weapons, animations, and enemy sprites ass look amateurish. There's no cohesiveness with the theme of the enemies. You have a green 3-headed dragon that imitates a pinky from DOOM, hitscan pistol soldiers and shotgun soldiers, (except the shotgun soldier looks like swamp thing.), these red dragons that are like fiends from quake, these bison looking things that are like quake ogres, pink bunny humanoids that are like the revenant from doom 2, cyberdemon terminator thing, spider machine gunners, these weird krampus lizard things that are imps, these tall slender man things that are like mancubi, and these metal dogs that are like faster pinkies. Overall I'd recommend because despite the levels looking samey because of the textures and lack of level flair, and enemy cohesiveness, I liked the way the guns felt, and the game started getting good by around level 11. At that point I h…1 found this helpful
This is an FPS distilled down to its purest form. Graphically the sprites feel a bit all over the place (mainly the realistic first person gun models not fitting with the rest of the aesthetic) and there is no story. But mechanically its an extremely sound oldschool shooter that simply feels good to move around and shoot in. The level design is also very fun, lots of little sections that feel like homages to places seen in Doom and Quake, but always part of a bigger level that's a lot of fun to explore. I also absolutely love the chiptune soundtrack. I have yet to play around with the map editor and custom levels but I imagine they'll add a lot to the experience post main campaign. I'd absolutely love to see what this dev can do when paired with an artist who can keep a consistent aesthetic.
Great game!
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