Mondrian - Abstraction in Beauty

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Mondrian - Abstraction in Beauty is a neat game to play if you're looking to unwind and relax or you're just really affectionate about busting bricks. Being able to spin around 360 degrees in an arena is a nice change to most of the general breakout games out there and the quirks continue with the assortment of powerups, stages, and arena modifications to unlock. The music is also pretty neat too, especially with how certain tracks will be played depending on what difficulty you choose. And of course, having a focus on art, the game's minimalistic aesthetic is beautiful, Piet would be proud! While it's a bit rough around the edges in some parts, Mondrian's worth giving a shot.

Mondrian – Abstraction in Beauty, developed and published by Lantana Games, is a minimalist reinterpretation of the classic brick-breaking formula that attempts to elevate a familiar arcade concept into something more reflective and artistic. Rather than focusing on fast-paced challenge or competitive scoring, the game leans into abstraction, drawing inspiration from geometric art and using it as both a visual identity and a design philosophy. The result is an experience that feels less like a traditional game and more like an interactive exploration of form, movement, and color. The foundation of the gameplay is immediately recognizable: you control a paddle and guide a ball to break apart blocks arranged across the screen. However, Mondrian alters this formula by allowing movement across a full 360-degree plane instead of restricting the player to a single axis. This change introduces a more fluid sense of positioning, where angles and spatial awareness become more important than simple horizontal reactions. It subtly transforms the rhythm of play, making each interaction feel less predictable and more open-ended, even though the core mechanics remain simple. Levels are procedu…

Very chill game in the vein of Arkanoid. If you like brick breaking games you might get some enjoyment out of this.

"Art Game" Almost any critism leveled at Mondrian could be countered with 'it's part of the experience of this form of expression of art', but ultimately the game is just not very fun.I'd rather just play plain Breakout, which is essentially what the game is. The controls are awkward, in particular once you've circled around to the top of the screen and they effectively reverse, the ball bounces off things in a strange, non-intuitive way, and the core gameplay loop takes too long to be very engrossing. This is a shallow, low effort attempt at bringing art to gamers. Consider other, more enjoyable works, such as Braid, Okami, walking simulators such as Proteus, or more surrealist works such as Yume Nikki or All Of Our Friends Are Dead (which is free, btw).

The premise and the visuals are promising but once one starts playing, the sad reality is that only keyboard allowed, and the game feels like a slog even if one sets the Hard difficulty and fastest speed, as the ball is always fairly slow and its physics iffy, to the point where one has to pray it finally takes the direction to finally get that damn last block. Once unlocked, certain paddles and modes cannot be deactivated, the only way is to reset the game's whole progress. It's a baffling choice and for some reason, the developers never fixed that and even say that one is the "remedy". My guess is that, concerned about making the game an "art piece", they made it so that it could played by pretty much everyone, including people who never touched a videogame. A laudable intent but ultimately, for a "gamer" like me, it ends up being just boring, and the unlockables can't hold my interest much if the basic gameplay is like that.