Chain Break Review – A Quality Runner Title on Gameboy and Evercade With Indie Heroes Collection 1!

In Chain Break, you just escaped the laboratory of a mad doctor who planned to do experiments on you. Now you have to continue your way through multiple rooms of death traps to secure your freedom. That’s an interesting premise, but how is the gameplay?

Gameplay

It is a straightforward side-view runner title in that you do the same thing throughout all of the game. You run from one side of the screen to the other and press a button to jump over hazards as you make your way to the end of the level. Moving up and down can also be done as you navigate the path before you. There are no items or weapons for you to use, and one hit always kills you.

However, you can pick up coins to earn points to get extra lives, and also grab hourglasses to increase your oxygen level. The latter is your timer; if you run out of oxygen you die. You can also earn an extra life every 1000 points. Thankfully, the first ten levels give you ample opportunity to rack up lives. The whole game is made up of 5 areas of 5 levels each, totaling 25 stages in all.

In doing research for the game, I learned that it was inspired by Namco’s Metro-Cross, which was a game that I was introduced to when I went to the Next Level Pinball Museum in Hillsboro, OR. I made reference to it in my review and guide of that great place!

Turning back to Chain Break, as I advanced through the game I was impressed by its constantly progressive level design. There are additional hazards and stage elements all the way to the end. For example, near the beginning there are speed up and slow down sections of the floor and spikes to jump over. Later, obstacles and enemies that try to smash you to bits are added. Even as I was reaching the conclusion of the game more obstacles were being introduced. All this helps give the game a sense of completeness which I appreciate.

In terms of difficulty, the title moves at a pretty good clip, especially when you are on the speedup pads. In the second half of the game I’d routinely crash into obstacles and enemies with only a split second to react. Much of Chain Break’s challenge comes from learning the levels and how to get around the hazards. I often found that I needed to develop a safe route through each stage. Doing so was the key to success. In that regard, it reminded me of a traditional shmup even though there were no shooter aspects in the gameplay.

Graphics and Control

In regard to graphics, I think they look quite good. I especially liked the background graphics for the different areas. One reminded me of the Daleks in the original Doctor Who for some reason (it did make me laugh when I saw it, though!). For the regular sprites, the details in the graphics are good. An aspect that was neat was the contrast between the different floor elements, such as the speed up, slow down, and spike areas. Their differences helped them be noticed easily while playing. This was the case while playing on the big screen, or portable.

Speaking of which, much of my time playing was on the Technos Super Pocket by Hyper Mega Tech (Official Website). Despite the screen only being 2.8” in size, I didn’t have problems seeing what was happening and playing the game. Unlike the original Gameboy, ghosting was not a problem either. The only issue I had was that sometimes my thumb would slip on the D-Pad, causing my character to move down unintentionally. This was a little bit of a pain, but I didn’t notice it on the standard Evercade VS controller.

Music and Sound Effects

Music didn’t really stand out to me too much. However, it can be a little bit irritating when you lose a lot of lives on a stage and hear the beginning of the music repeatedly.

One of my favorite aspects concerning audio was the music that played between levels. I enjoyed the little ditty that plays on the screen where your level number and password are shown. There are also sound effects for when you fall into spikes or explode, but they are not noteworthy.

Occasionally I would hear a little beep sound. I wasn’t sure if it was due to the game or something else. I think it was an indication of a saw blade coming my way, but I was never able to pin point the trigger for it.

Miscellaneous

One appreciated aspect was that Chain Break contains passwords for every level. However, they are about 12 characters in length, making them a bit long to enter on original hardware. At least they are there!

There are two other elements that I really liked from the game. One is the art design for the ending, game over, and title screens. They don’t add anything to the gameplay, but I felt like they fit well with the game’s premise and art style.

Also, the game does a nice job of ending on a positive note. Of course, winning the game is normally positive, but the way everything was concluded made me smile and caused me think, “Yup, this was a good game! Nice work!” Such a reaction has not always been the case for the games on Indie Heroes Collection 1.

Summary

Coming to the end of this review, I knew I was going to give it at least a positive rating once I saw the ending. However, after putting my thoughts together here, I think Chain Break deserves a Very Positive rating. The reason being: I can’t come up with many serious flaws with it!

The graphics look good for the Gameboy, the gameplay is developed well throughout the whole journey, the music is fine, and the challenge is reasonable when playing on a non-ghosting screen.

The game is available for free online, and the rom file is linked below.

For those curious, the last two games I reviewed on Indie Heroes Collection 1 were also Gameboy titles. They include the Gameboy horror game, Deadeus, and an overhead adventure called Quest Arrest.

I expect that next two games I’ll review from Indie Heroes Collection 1 will be Foxyland and Super Homebrew War.

Title: Chain Break
Genre: Side-view Runner
Year Released: 2019
Developer: Tuxedo Games
Available On: The original Gameboy and Evercade through Indie Heroes Collection 1.
Price Paid: $1.14, or $16.00 for Indie Heroes Collection 1

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.