Among the very early-days, classic video games to be developed, I’ve never quite thought the original Breakout and its many variations over the years have gotten the respect they deserved. Arkanoid and its follow-ups are certainly the most noteworthy over the years, having added the concept of power-ups and much more stage variety to the formula, but in terms of total games being made over time this has always felt like an underrepresented subgenre.

It seems that with Destructure the goal is to change things up a bit, and I’m absolutely here for that. If you could imagine Arkanoid with more of an edge geared up for combat, that should roughly give you the idea here. Rather than breaking through random bricks or things like that, your obstacles are geared more to the real world in the form of fences, barriers, and formidable walls. As opposed to having somewhat random items floating around acting as opponents in this case you’ll have things like sentry guns returning fire to take you out. While on some stages you’ll have a wall behind you, allowing you to sometimes ignore your balls passing you by, on others you’ll have a grinder that will gladly gobble them up and chip away at your health. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be terribly fair if you lacked the ability to fight back, so you’ll sometimes be able to grab random weapons and power-ups that will make your job considerably easier. You’ll also sometimes see blue orbs which act as your currency fly away from destroyed enemies, but beware that it will often be accompanied by enemy fire as well so you’ll need to be careful. You’ll want to grab all you can though since between stages it can be used for a variety of powerful items, or just to recoup some of your health.

Overall, I’d say this is probably the toughest brick-breaker I’ve ever played, but while I love a challenge there are some aspects here I’m less enamored with. The controls in this sort of title seem to always be a stumbling block, and with the tendency for you to need to dodge and weave between bullets while trying to keep the ball alive, unfortunately I’d say the game’s design only serves to exacerbate that issue. It does work, and you can get better at it, but the odds often seem to be stacked a little too much against you. Another fair question would be whether there’s a sufficient intersection of brick-breaker fans who are also craving some tough-as-nails play with you needing to sometimes dodge for your life. I applaud the effort in the name of having different options, but it may be a bit too unforgiving at times for what tends to be a more generally casual audience.