The last time I was utilizing the wind to blow a flower around, it was a calm, relaxing experience provided by ThatGameCompany’s Flower,  set in lush open meadows with gorgeous sights to see. Breeze also features a flower the and the power of the wind, but this is a far from relaxing experience.

Breeze is simple to understand but difficult to master, with 60 challenging levels to traverse. A few poor design choices mean it’s not such great fun, although if you’re more tolerant than myself, you may find the game worthwhile.

GAMEPLAY

Presented with a series of mazes, the player takes control of a fan which must be used to blow the flower through the obstacles and into the goal. Along the way you may need to collect glowing suns before the finish line will activate.

The fan will always point at the flower no matter where you move it, and you can control how fast the flower flies by moving the fan close to or away from it. Initially, levels are pretty simple to let you get used to the idea, but pretty soon the difficulty is ramped up, and it all gets very challenging indeed.

This would all be fine, but unfortunately there are a few niggles which suck the fun out of the scenario. First off, if your fan touches the flower, it explodes. Sounds obvious, but in play it’s very annoying – especially on later levels where you’re zipping the fan about all over the place. It would have been much better if the fan had simply slipped around the flower and dodged it, for the sake of the player’s sanity.

Collecting suns is pretty distracting. It’s hard enough trying to keep the flower safe, without having to look for those blasted suns too! It perhaps would have been more fun if the suns were simply for bragging rights, giving players extra score, but as it is, it’s a bit of a nuisance.

This collectathon is made even more annoying by the lack of an overmap. There’s no way to zoom out and see the entire level, so you are forced to explore every inch of each maze for them, which is not much fun at all. With this type of concept, being able to see the whole level in some form is a must.

Through all this issues, it’s hard to deny that Breeze provides a decent challenge for anyone who is willing to take it. Over the course of 60 levels, the obstacles become more and more vicious, and you’ll need an incredibly steady hand to finish off the last dozen. There are also ‘Nullcity Records’ on each level – i.e. developer times to beat. These are stupidly hard to master, and I only managed to beat a couple.

STYLE

Breeze looks rather dainty, with various blurred backdrops and lovely 2D objects. It looks great and gives off an ambient vibe, even if the gameplay is far from it.

The music compliments the general look really well… for about ten minutes. Annoyingly, the same music track is played on repeat for the entire game, and understandably I’d muted the television after a short while. XBLIG developers: please take more time with your soundtrack – it’s more important than you think!

STORY

There is no story, nor is there really much room for putting your own storyline to the action.

OTHER

Breeze could have potentially been a lot of fun, but a few annoyances downgrade the gameplay to frustrating levels. It feels like quite a shame, since these problems would be easily solvable and could render the game worth playing.

As it is, the game made me want to break things with my Xbox controller, and that can’t be a good thing. Avoid unless you really love a challenge.