Super Bunny Breakout on iOS: Atari updates Breakout for the modern gamer

Last week, we brought you a preview of Super Bunny Breakout, Atari and Zynga's upcoming Breakout game on iPhone and iPad. Now that we've had a chance to go hands-on with the final product, we've found this this updated version of Breakout is clever, complex and plenty of fun.

Super Bunny Breakout offers level-based gameplay, as you'll take control of a super bunny that's working to save colorful critters from a testing lab. Each level has a different initial setup of breakable vials, test tubes, crates, gears and other obstacles, and you'll need to bounce your super bunny (or another character that you can unlock along the way) towards the top of the screen to free every critter before you run out of energy.

Energy (or health) in this case is lost as you fail to catch or bounce the bunny back towards the top of the screen. Once your character runs out of energy, it's game over for that level, but energy will recharge automatically between levels over time. If you don't want to wait for your characters to recharge on their own, you can purchase food items with the coins you'll earn to feed them until they're reenergized. Each character has a power-up that can be activated every few seconds while playing, so it's worth keeping them all fed just in case you need a specific kind of power-ups to make a level easier.

In each stage, there are plenty of power-ups and obstacles to avoid, even outside of the items that sit at the top of the screen. Helpful items might reverse gravity for a time or instantly increase your energy, while blue goo may slow down the speed at which you can move your bounce pad at the bottom. The bounce pad itself has even been given an update for the modern era, as it can be moved both vertically and horizontally within an invisible rectangular area along the bottom of the screen. This vertical movement allows you to more easily control the speed at which the bunny moves, as you can rocket the bunny towards the top of the screen with much more force than you ever could traditionally.

%Gallery-168189%

At the end of each level, you'll receive a star rating based on the number of points you earned, and can replay each stage to improve your score. You can also visit the game's treehouse of sorts, outside of the lab, where any sort of character interaction (feeding and boosting) is done. There's a lot of humor with these characters, each of which has a clever personality and offers plenty of pop-culture references, and even though there's the potential to spend real money for additional coins in a game that you may already have paid $0.99 to purchase, you can earn coins on your own at a fast enough pace to stop this from really being necessary.

Super Bunny Breakout offers lots of depth, power-ups, funny characters and charm and creates a worthwhile iOS experience in the process. If you're interested in trying the game for yourself, you can download a free version to test 10 of the game's levels, or can purchase the full version for $0.99.

Click here to download Super Bunny Breakout Free on iTunes --->

What do you think of Super Bunny Breakout? Do you think Atari has improved the original Breakout formula with these changes? Sound off in the comments!