Doughlings: Arcade

Genre: Arcade Brick Breaker

Players: 1

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Review:

Doughlings: Arcade is a family-friendly Arcade-style Brick Breaker game in the same vein as games like Breakout and Arkanoid, but with elements of a color-matching Puzzle game like Puzzle Bobble (AKA Bust-A-Move). This game was released on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2018, and ported to PlayStation 4 in 2019.

The presentation here uses cartoony (and kinda’ ugly) character designs with bright colorful backgrounds and a menu aesthetic that seems reminiscent of a mobile game. This is paired with a generic-sounding jazzy funk sorta’ soundtrack and a cheesy announcer that seems out-of-place for the game. Honestly, I am not a fan of this game’s presentation. Maybe a young child might find this appealing, but to me it looks ugly and sounds terrible.

The gameplay, at least, is mostly pretty decent. This game takes the Arkanoid formula and tries something a bit different with it by having “blocks” (in actuality, infected “doughlings” critters) color-coded and affected by gravity like in Puzzle Bobble. Attacks gradually weaken blocks (from yellow to green to blue), and some special attacks affect contiguous enemies of one color. When a section of blocks isn’t connected somehow to the ceiling above, they fall. This is both a good and bad thing – it clears more blocks at a time, but the falling blocks are a hazard that slows down players.

It’s a decent concept, and it has the benefit of setting it apart from other games in the genre, though it does have its downsides – it makes it less often that you’ll be able to enjoy the quirk of the genre where aiming your ball juuuuust right can trap it behind blocks, both because there’s less likelihood that you’ll have that sort of gap without the blocks falling, and because the blocks themselves are shaped in a way that makes this harder to pull off even when there’s an opportunity.

One more thing I should note here – on Nintendo Switch, this game does make use of touchscreen, but apparently only in menus. I suppose it’s better than not having this feature included at all, but it seems like a pretty insignificant use of the Nintendo Switch’s unique features.

Overall, I think Doughlings is a decent entry in the Arcade Brick Breaker series, but it’s hindered by its flaws, both in its conceptually interesting but ultimately less than ideal gameplay, and in its unappealing presentation. On balance, I think that fans of the genre are likely to enjoy this game, but it’s not likely to entice most players.

tl;dr – Doughlings: Arcade is a family-friendly Arcade Brick Breaker where the bricks are actually color-coded “doughlings” critters that fall when they’re not supported by the ceiling, much like in Puzzle Bobble. It’s a decent concept, but one that proves to have just as many drawbacks as benefits. Also, the cheesy presentation isn’t fantastic. All things considered, fans of the genre will still likely find this game to be worth their time, but everyone else is probably better off trying something else.

Grade: C+

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