It’s not even a month since we wrote about Trikanoid, a fun remake of 80's arcade classic Arkanoid. But developers Triumph Remakers have been busy, and version 1.2 for Windows has just been released (the Mac build is coming soon), with some very welcome additions.
Top of the “new features” list must be mouse support. Previously the program only supported keyboard control, which wasn’t the most natural way to move your pad around, but being able to control it with your mouse, instead, is a real improvement.
Trikanoid 1.2 also now allows you to move your pad at the normal, constant rate, or an accelerated ball speed-dependent rate (so when the ball shoots off your pad at an angle and a very high speed, your pad will also move more quickly). This may help you catch balls you’d otherwise miss, but of course you’ll also need great judgment to position your pad accurately when it’s moving so fast, so we’re not yet sure how useful it will be. Try it and see.
Elsewhere, if you were at all confused by any aspect of the game in the previous edition, you might appreciate the new on-screen instructions.
And some well-judged compression in the installer means that the download size has been reduced by around 70%.
While the new mouse support is certainly welcome, we have noticed a minor problem or two.
We’re not entirely sure about the first, but mouse movement doesn’t seem to be quite as smooth as it should be, almost as though there’s a jump when the pad first starts moving. But we’ll need to spend more time playing the game to be sure (that’s our excuse, anyway).
The second issue, though, is that the program actually captures the mouse, so if you Alt+Tab away from Trikanoid to some other application then it’ll no longer work (the mouse cursor remains visible, but you can’t move it). This isn’t a major problem – if you want to do something else, just close Trikanoid rather than Alt+Tabbing – but it’s still a little annoying.
We’d hazard a guess that the issue will be fixed very soon, though. And even with this, Trikanoid is still a fun arcade remake, with great sound and graphics, and the new mouse control makes it more playable than ever.
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