Boom Voyage

Back when the technical capabilities were very limited, video game developers had to come up with other ways to please the players, instead of flashy graphics and realistic physics engines. Hence, a lot of emphasis was awarded to the fun factor and whether the titles had the potential to become addictive, due to their immense replayability and the motivating highscore system.

Boom Voyage is a small arcade game in which you have to use a ball and a paddle in order to topple down famous buildings from all over the world, as well as gather a variety of power-ups to become more efficient. Since the game is largely inspired by titles like Arkanoid and DXball, most of the mechanics are very similar, but designed to look a bit better.

To make matters more interesting, the levels are spread all around the planet and they feature famous buildings, such as the huge statues and tombs from ancient Egypt, or saloons in the Wild West. The game uses a rather advanced physics engine to make the demolitions look realistic, as well as plenty of particle effects to render the destruction.

Just like in the aforementioned classics, some of the blocks drop power-ups that can be picked up in order to take advantage of various abilities. Thus, there are some drops that turn the ball into an unstoppable fire ball, while others make your paddle a bit longer. However, you can also stumble into negative items, which have the opposite effect and make it significantly more difficult to stay alive.

Regardless of what you happen to pick-up, you must learn to adapt to the new gameplay conditions, whether they are better or not. Hence, in case you happen to shrink the ball, not only that you'll have a difficult time trying to calculate where it is going to land, but it is also less capable of hitting multiple blocks at the same time and you must spend more time than usual trying to pass the level.

Unlike the arcade classics, however, Boom Voyage does not feature a very impressive collection of stages, which means that you will be done with the game quite shortly. Moreover, the levels do not get that difficult either, just a bit more crowded and cramped.