Despite being a relatively new genre in the wonderful world of video games, it appears that Survivors style games are here to stay (even if we haven’t all agreed on their genre name yet). Although nobody has snatched the crown of poncle and Vampire Survivors yet there are so many new Bullet Heaven games to enjoy for those newly born fans, from Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor to Brotato. Another game is throwing its hat in the Survive-A-Ton ring now, and it’s another unique take on the genre. Cloudbreaker replaces swords with airships and takes place entirely in the sky, while still retaining what makes these fantastic games tick.
In Cloudbreaker your task is to go below the safety of the floating cities, and collect some sort of important material that’ll help civilisation continue. It’s basically a setup to send you and your flying machine into a sky full of angry creatures, and get you to survive for as long as possible. It’s certainly a nice theme at least, until you start dying repeatedly anyway.
The first thing I noticed about Cloudbreaker was how wildly punishing it was. In most of these games where you aim to survive thirty minutes you’ll get fairly close on your early attempts, but here I was dying six minutes in over and over again. Even with the best of auto firing equipment I just kept getting battered, and needed more practice and better upgrades to cope.
When I started to cope I was able to enjoy some of the clever mechanics in the game, like how weapons work. Whereas most Survivors style games give you a set amount of weapons per run, in Cloudbreaker you can have as many as you can fit in your aircraft. Your ship is made up of a grid where you can place any weapons and upgrades you gain for leveling up, and it’s up to you to do some lovely inventory management to fit them all in.
Making room for all your weapons and parts isn’t enough though, you also need to make sure they’re positioned correctly. Most weapons for example only fire in one direction, and it’s up to you to point them wherever works best for you. If you want all your guns to point in one direction for maximum damage that’s totally valid, but with swarms always coming from all directions it you’ll have to do a good job of dodging and weaving.
The variety of weapons you’re offered as you level up (from a choice of three of course) is nice and varied, with lasers, homing missiles, and even turrets you can aim yourself in a twin stick style if you want. There are other upgrades which are less offensive though, like shield generators and magic magnets that increase the range you pick up orbs. Most of these can also be linked to other upgrades in your ship for power boosts, and this is yet another piece of the inventory management puzzle. I really enjoyed this side of the game, as it adds more mid-run thinking than most Survivors copycats.
Depending on how well you do in a run of Cloudbreaker you’ll earn currency to spend between runs, which can grant lots of little buffs to your ship. From damage boosts to space upgrades there’s plenty to choose from, but it doesn’t take long for the costs over this to become a little ludicrous. There were so many times between runs where I’d upgrade nothing, and considering I was rarely doing well it didn’t feel great.
Survivors games often feel fairly straightforward after a few sessions, but that is not the case with Cloudbreaker. There are loads of extra elements to take into account when playing, like the floating bases that grant you upgrades and support you with covering fire, or the special attack meter you can build by destroying glowing purple enemies. The variety of foes is pretty impressive too, although whoever created the exploding blobs isn’t invited to my birthday party. Even between runs you can unlock new ships with different setups and gain access to new upgrades you’ll find on runs. If you want to play a lot of Cloudbreaker, then there’s absolutely the content to facilitate that.
Cloudbreaker is an ambitious and enjoyable Survivors style game, but it ultimately frustrated me more than many of its peers. The difficulty alone is not what I look for in this genre, and dying repeatedly after such short bursts of time just feels crap. This would be made better with faster permanent upgrades too but waiting for them takes so long, and it’s such a shame because this is almost a great addition to the genre.
Cloudbreaker has some clever ideas and a great theme, but for me the difficulty and unlock speed just detracted a little too much from the enjoyment. If you can muscle past this though (or if this is tweaked post release) you’ll find a creative bullet heaven game with a lot to offer, like unexpected inventory management and a nice variety of upgrades. Those obsessed with the genre will quite possibly get enough out of Cloudbreaker though, at least if they’re better at piloting than I am.
