REVIEW : Arkan: The dog adventurer (XBOX Series X)
Arkan: The Dog Adventurer was developed and published by Madao Studio. I got attracted to this game by hearing the title as I am a dog lover. You are an armoured dog, free to move around and fly around, swinging a bowlike stick to knock back the ball to the enemy. If you grew up playing a classic brick breaker game like Arkanoid or Breakout, you know exactly what to expect, except that the gameplay is played horizontally instead of vertically. This is an interesting combination of platform and brick break genres. As I wrote this, I realized that the dog’s name might be Arkanoid because of its roots in Arkanoid games.
Move the alkane with the left stick, aim with the right, and hit the ball in the direction the cursor aims with the right trigger. There is a slight delay between the shots your racket can take. Therefore, you need to practice the timing, as you cannot spam the attack when the ball approaches. You can also use the “Left Trigger” to slow down the time and teleport short in the direction you are aiming. While it was working, I forgot that I had the opportunity until it went crazy and busy. The nasty creature selection fires different projectiles at you that you must avoid as soon as you try to break through the blocks to get rid of them. The
Arkan also has the ball and can be thrown in any direction with the help of reliable staff. He can only move to the right side of the screen until he encounters a force field and can’t go any further (and the game gets too easy). Use the ball to break through blocks of various strengths. This allows you to shoot enemies and collect stars of this level. The ball is free to bounce around the level but is lost when it hits the left side of the screen.
The settings for this control are fine, but it’s not natural for jumps to be tied to pressing “up” on the stick instead of a special button. If you want to make a double jump, you guessed it; you have to look at the ball and try to steer the arcan on a small shelf, as well as hit it twice. It’s functional and works, but it doesn’t feel natural after playing for a long time.
Akran plays on the left side of the screen, and all bricks and enemies are on the right. Every foe uses a different projectile, and in the end, you’ll also have to deal with zombie hands rising from the ground you’re currently standing on on the very few platforms provided to you. So you usually always move to avoid other projectiles. There is a force field on the right side of the screen that prevents Arkan from coming too close, and there are a lot of holes that end the game if you fall into it.
There are three worlds of twenty.
Levels each, and you get up to 3 stars depending on the number of three stars you broke with the ball. Yes, it’s not judged by the speed of clearing the level or the number of stones destroyed, but by the number of 3 stars collected before destroying the last enemy to complete the level. You can choose from three different levels of difficulty, but interestingly, it has nothing to do with your progress. This means that if you play hard and get caught up in levels, you can easily earn stars and return to hard if needed. Certain levels, even in Easy, seem to have random, high difficulty peaks, but you don’t have to play the levels in sequence, and if you get stuck, you’re free to jump between different levels. As far as I know, the main difference in difficulty is in the number of enemies. This means that there are far more projectiles to avoid. Hard mode is very difficult, especially when you reach the Third World. This last world translates each level into the number of projectiles you can throw at you, hiding your enemies behind as many almost destructible stones as possible rather than clever stone placement.
With cute pixel art, Arakan: Dog adventurers never intend to “impress” you, but it does the job by having a friendly and colourful aesthetic. The music is about the same level, with just a few notes and songs, but nothing memorable.
Some online leaderboards or other scoring systems give Arakan some life, but you probably won’t play much after collecting all the stars and challenging them at each level. Arkan: Dog adventurers look decent enough and target the retro style themes that many budget indie titles have these days.
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