Arkanoid – Eternal Battle

Arkanoid has been around since 1986, when Taito’s original block breaker taught a generation of arcade players to sweat over a bouncing ball and a paddle that never moved fast enough. Arkanoid: Eternal Battle, built by French studio Pastagames, takes that ancient formula and bolts a 24-player online battle royale onto it. It sounds like a strange pairing on paper, but the idea is simple: instead of just clearing bricks alone, you’re now racing other players to survive while the game throws chaos at everyone at once.

How it plays

The foundation is still classic Arkanoid: you control the Vaus ship, keep a ball alive, and smash through walls of blocks using power-ups and special effects that shake up the pace. The game splits into a few distinct modes. Neo is a single-player campaign with a fresh set of power-ups and wall layouts, while Retro leans into the game’s arcade roots for players who want the original feel with a coat of new paint. Versus lets two to four people go head-to-head on a split screen, though you’ll need a controller for that one. The headline mode is Eternal Battle itself, where up to 24 players compete online at the same time, using special champion powers to mess with opponents or claw back an advantage, until only one paddle is left standing. There’s also an adaptive soundtrack that shifts with the action, and cross-play so people on different hardware can end up in the same match.

Who it’s for

If you grew up on Arkanoid or Breakout clones and still enjoy that particular flavor of twitchy, ball-tracking tension, this is an easy sell. It’s also worth a look for anyone curious about how a decades-old arcade genre holds up when you stretch it into a competitive online format. On the other hand, if you find block breakers repetitive by nature, adding more players to the mix isn’t going to fix that for you. And since the multiplayer modes are the real selling point here, this game leans hard on having other people around to play with, so it won’t hold your attention the same way if you’re strictly a solo player looking for a long campaign.

Is it worth grabbing?

For what it is, yes, it’s an easy one to add to your library. It’s a lightweight, genre-specific game rather than a sprawling epic, so there’s little downside to grabbing it and seeing whether the Eternal Battle mode clicks with you. Fans of the original arcade game will get the most mileage out of it, since the Retro mode and classic gameplay loop are built with them in mind, but the battle royale twist gives it a reason to exist beyond nostalgia. Just go in expecting a focused arcade experience rather than something with deep systems or a long single-player hook.

Quick facts

Genre: Action, Indie, Massively Multiplayer. Developer: Pastagames. Publisher: Microids. Platform: PC (Steam). Release date: October 27, 2022.