Dreamstones

an Arkanoid clone with RPG elements, while at first its enjoyable... then you start noticing the collision and physics bugs, the ball just going straight through the paddle, being sent downward instead of back up, or otherwise the wrong direction. The split ability seems to almost always shoot a ball towards the bottom of the screen regardless of the balls original direction... making it a low value skill with a long cooldown. would love to play more... but... these bugs are just killing me

Dreamstones is a competent brick breaker game and probably my favorite game from Windybeard I have played so far. The game has over 200 levels with a decent amount of variety in level design. The game feels good to play because you have a lot of control over the ball with your paddle. You also get to customize your active and passive skills. Throughout my playthrough I changed my loadout frequently because as the difficulty increases you will need to adapt to the new challenges. Some minor issues: The game gets grindy towards the end if you are a completionist. It can be hard to distinguish background and foreground and the only solution the game has is to make the background grey. The passives for critchance don’t work. In some of the levels the ball can get stuck forever, even if it unstucks itself after a couple of minutes the ball will be so fast it is uncontrollable. You can’t rebind the controls.

Dreamstones is a classic brick-breaker with some extra flavour. It won't make you fall in love with the genre, but if you already like it, it offers over 20 hours of gameplay. A great feature is the weapon and skill system, enabling different playstyles and a nice progression. The stages oscillate between casual, interesting, and infuriating. I had many issues with how the obstacles camouflage in the background, making them harder to see. A bad design decision that was saved by the amazing option to [b]desaturate the background[/b]. ❤ The kingdom-building mechanic is bland, basically a gold sink with no benefit other than unlocking more stages eventually.

I love me some brick breaker games and this has a great spin on it. Great podcast/youtube second screen game!

Just in case anyone is having a look at this in 2024 or later, I'd advise skipping it, primary for the inconsistency with the physics (rebound angles) that other people have mentioned. You can probably get through the first three or four areas without this being too offensive, but the further on you go, the harder that game is and therefore precision moves from important to crucial. I'm in the last area of the game and I don't know if I can bring myself to finish it. It's a shame, because it is a fun Arkanoid-inspired game, but for a game to become increasingly un-fun the further you go due to poor execution means you're better off not starting down the path.

Inadequate controller support