Prepare to dive into the unknown.
Cloudbreaker is the debut bullet heaven game from developer Ballast games, you take control of an air ship sent on scavenging missions or “dives” into a hostile planet’s atmosphere. During the course of your dive, you face flying monsters who rapidly increase in both numbers and toughness. You must destroy these creatures and harvest a substance known as “bloil” that they drop and you can also discover abandoned floating outposts which can reward you with bonuses such as scrap, healing or even an ultra-rare relic ship part.
During the course of your dive when you gather enough bloil you level up and are then given the option of 3 ship parts to select to upgrade your ship, these vary greatly and include extra weapons and weapon types, parts you can weld onto other parts to give them a bonus or you might find extra shields, Nitro boosters or a repulsion field all of which are helpful on their own but it’s how you manage your ships upgrades in the layout that is interesting. Depending on where you place the item it might not receive as much power from the core so you have to consider using a precious few slots connecting that compartment to the core boosting the effectiveness however the slot the extension used takes up valuable room you could add an extra weapon.
Customization is Key!
The longer your dive goes and the more parts you acquire the minigame of inventory management becomes a welcome breather from the chaos of 100’s of creatures cluttering the screen as you pause to consider whether you can squeeze a 5th cannon onto your ship and should your tesla coils or a shield module make way for it. You can salvage spare parts into scrap which is then used to upgrade your weapons adding an interesting dynamic into gameplay as you can convert a microwave array into longer range but a far smaller field or you can fit your cannons into firing shots that leave acid clouds. There is a huge number of options to choose from, and each affect the run in interesting and unexcepted ways it really adds to the games replayabilty.
The mission ends when you destroy the 3rd and final boss that spawns and if you manage that you are rewarded with shards to upgrade your ship back in your hanger with bonuses like extra armour, unlock new and exciting ship parts or even bigger ships to try each new ship has a new inventory management size and pattern.
There is no shame in defeat! this game is hard.
The gameplay loop of destroy, harvest and scavenge is compelling and with the random roguelike nature of the ship parts you receive means the mission can either go very well or if you are unlucky can fail rapidly. The game is almost unfair on how fast the creature difficulties pile up if you don’t receive a weapon in the first few levels you may as well restart because it becomes impossible to deal with the horde of creatures attacking you from each angle. The game hands out the upgrade shards at a painfully slow rate too so even if you have a decent run that lasts for 20 to 30 minutes you might end up being able to upgrade 1 part once you have put a few hours in.
After nearly 17 hours played, I still find myself dying after 5 minutes with a nearly fully upgraded tug ship I have unlocked deeper into the cloud canopy where harder and fast monsters live but find myself getting obliterated after no time at all. While this is frustrating admittedly it hasn’t affected me coming back to Cloudbreakers time and time again as I search to try a new combination of weapons and upgrades which is impressive. That said I do feel the developer could tone down volume or health of the creatures in the early stages or increase the number of recourses gained so you can upgrade parts to at least give your ship a fighting chance.
However, when you do find yourself in that perfect game when RNJesus smiles down and you get the weapons and ship parts you want in the combination you need Cloudbreaker’s is a blast, mowing through hordes of sky squid with a rotating plasma sword turbo charged with tesla coils is fantastic and the subsequent explosion of bloil and levels gains gives you a much needed serotonin boost.
Pixel art mixed with chaotic gameplay.
Cloudbreaker has a charming pixel art graphics style which is pleasing on the eye however with the sheer number of enemies that appear as the mission goes on clutter the screen and it can become very hard to keep track of your ships location and there has been many times I accidently boosted into a crown of enemies by mistake. After playing both on PC and my Legion GO I found that while the game ran fantastically on both I much preferred playing on my handheld device and the game seems to be more suited to relaxing on a sofa while you scavenge. The game music and sound effects can become a bit annoying, and I found turning it down during the later parts of a mission when huge amount of enemies are all making different noises at the same time.
If you are a fan of Vampire survivors or other bullet heaven games you will enjoy Cloudbreaker, boasting smooth, addictive gameplay along with an impressive and complex upgrade system. This along with the sheer number of ship part combinations means you could easily find yourself putting dozens of hours into this game. If you want to try Cloudbreaker for yourself, you can find the steam link here.
