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Arkanoid, Breakout, Bricks. All games that belong to a genre which is a mix between Pong and Space Invaders. We have all played these types of games for years. Well now PDAmill has released Fireball for the Windows SmartPhone so you can take your game with you.

PDAmill is not new to the Windows Mobile platform. They have many titles available for Pocket PC and even the Palm OS. They also have a current list of seven games for the SmartPhone:

Aqua Blocks
Blocks Plus
Cannons
Fireball
Jewel Master
Snake
Snails

All of the games except Snails are available for $2.95 each. Snails is only slightly more, at $9.95. These prices are very reasonable for games if the gameplay is good. So is Fireball worth $2.95? Is the game experience intense enough to warrant you parting with such a sum? Read on.

This is what PDAmill says about Fireball:

Fireball In the year 30X7, Tom Tulkit makes his living in spaceship maintenance. His job is getting rid of space barnacles that collect outside of spaceships' hulls. These barnacles will slow down a spaceship and eventually start to eat away the hull. Compatibility: Motorola MPX-200, Orange Motorola MPx200, Orange SPV E200, Qtek 7070, Samsung i600, iMate Smartphones, Mio DigiWalker Requirements: 500k of Storage, 2 MB of RAM

When you start Fireball you are greeted by a splash screen. Look at it. Isn't it pretty? Notice the detail? Transitional colors? This is a sample of what you will see when you are actually playing.



The object of the game is to use the paddle at the bottom of the screen to reflect the ball back up at the blocks. Each time the ball hits a block, the block breaks up in a dissipating cloud. Causing all of the blocks to disappear takes you on to the next level.



But wait, there's more! Some of the blocks require hitting them more than once to make them disappear. Others will drop power-ups that can help or hurt your quest to clear the level. Power-ups include:

Grow - Makes your paddle larger
Shrink - Makes your paddle smaller
Speed Up - Speeds up the ball
Slow Down - Slows down the ball
Gravity - Pulls the ball towards the bottom of the screen
Levitate - Raises the ball towards the top of the screen
Sticky - Causes the ball to stick to the paddle
Crazy - Causes the ball to randomly bounce and move around the screen
Multiball - Splits your ball into 4 balls
Laser - Yes, this game has "frickin lasers". Two cannons fire from the paddle to destroy blocks
Fireball - Unstoppable ball that blazes through blocks
Clear Level - Explodes all blocks on the level
Free Ball - Adds an extra ball, like a free man
Combination - Multiple powerups at the same time
Invisible - Makes the ball invisible, but you can still see the tail

In addition to the power-ups, many levels have arrows that will affect the ball travel if the ball hits them.

As the levels progress they become more difficult. Difficulty increases because of speed, complexity of the levels, unbreakable blocks, and increasing numbers of bad power-ups. But the action is always intense, sometimes frustrating, and well worth a look. Considering you can own it for a mere $2.95 I have added this to my list of must-have games for my SmartPhone.