A story-driven brick breaking is out now on PS4 and PS Vita. Learn more in our Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure review!

 

Lillymo Games got to work with Colin Moriarty of the Sacred Symbols PlayStation Podcast to create a brick breaking game with a story mode, which is certainly something we don’t get to see every day! The game is set in the early 2300s, in a time during which Earth is still recovering from a decades-long World War that has taken almost the entire planet into battle… all, except for the isolationist United States, who, instead, used its power and NASA’s expertise to take to the stars. You will play as two pilots who are on a mission to find out why the ships that have preceded them have gone missing.

 

There are different gameplay modes for you to take on what Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure has to offer. There’s the regular Story Mode, which you can access from the Level Select option on the main menu, and it is here that you will take on the 40 stages that the game has to offer, including a handful of boss stages in which you’ll have to use the power of your spaceships and the bouncing ball to deal damage to each boss. The difficulty will ramp up bit by bit as you progress through the game, including changing the position of your spaceships from the bottom of the screens to the sides, as well as doubling down on this by having you control four spaceships at once at the bottom and the sides of the screen!

To do this, you will control the spaceships on the left side of the screen with the left analog stick, and the ones on the right side with the right analog stick. The ball can be sent into play with the X button, and you can switch between which spaceship will do this by pressing the L1 and R1 buttons. The spaceships at the bottom of the screen will be moved by moving the corresponding analog stick left and right, with the spaceships on the sides controlled by moving up and down. As you play a stage, a special bar will start to fill up for each of the two spaceships, and once it’s full, you can use the L1 and R1 buttons to shoot out a bar of energy that can send the ball flying in a new direction.

Each of the stages will have bricks of different colors, and each brick will also include a roman numeral. The color and the roman numeral will let you know how many times the ball will need to hit a brick before it’s destroyed completely. If you have collected a pickup that powers up your ball – more on these in a bit – you could end up with a heavy ball under your command, which will completely destroy any brick it touches, no matter its color or roman numeral, which can help you to quickly clear a stage. At the end of a level, your score will reflect the points obtained during the stage, as well as those you get as a bonus for the time you have left when the ball hits the final brick. Depending on your score, you will be given a rank, from D all the way up to S+.

There are many pickups you can collect with your spaceships, which will show up after destroying a brick here and there. There are bronze, silver, and gold coins that will add 25, 50, and 100 points to your overall score for the stage. You will also find pickups that can make your spaceship grow in size, as well as a decrease in size, others that will make the ball go faster or slower, a very important pickup that will create a temporary wall defense barrier that will keep the ball from going out of the screen, and even guns that will activate a spaceship’s gun systems for a short period of time.

 

Along with the Story Mode, Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure also includes extra modes to try. There’s Marathon Mode, Pong Mode, Random Mode, Shooter Mode, Catcher Mode, and Boss Rush Mode. Marathon is going to be a sort of endless mode in which you take on level after level until all of your lives are gone. Pong Mode offers exactly what you would expect, with you using your spaceships to battle against bosses in a match of Pong, as you try to score goal after goal. Random Mode is just random. Shooter Mode gives your spaceships their guns, and you have to shoot at the falling bricks so that none go past you. Catcher Mode is similar since you have to use your spaceships to catch the falling coins as you avoid the scarabs. The last one is Boss Rush Mode, which has you going up against all the bosses in the game, one after the other.

Since Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure Review is a Cross-Buy game, if you buy the PlayStation 4 version, you will get the PlayStation Vita version at no extra cost, and the other way around. It has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to unlock. It’s not going to be a short trophy run since you have to complete the game twice. Once in the normal mode, and another in the more challenging New Game+ you unlock after finishing the game once. The rest of the trophies are for completing different objectives, such as collecting dozens of the same pickups during your whole time with the game, another one for completing the game once within 24 real-life hours – something that shouldn’t be hard to do since a single run should take you around two hours and change -, or getting an S-Rank rating on all of the 40 levels in the game, to name some examples. For this last trophy, in particular, you should pause the game in each stage that you take on so that you can check how many points you need to obtain to get an S-Rank.

 

Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure is a fun brick breaking game that is Cross-Buy on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita that is certainly unique in that it has a Story Mode with cutscenes and everything. It has forty stages to complete and different gameplay modes to take on in-between, with a Platinum trophy to add to your collection, all for only $9.99. If you’re a fan of brick breaking games, then you could definitely give this one a try!

Disclaimer
This Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Lillymo Games.