BreakIn (1997) is an Arkanoid variant with a unique twist. It is similar to Taito’s Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (1987). This puzzle game also features enemies, various bonus balls, and weapons to shoot with. Like almost all computer Breakout and Arkanoid adaptations, it’s played with the mouse. At that time, there were many Breakout and Arkanoid clones in the Apple shareware scene with acceptable gameplay mechanics, but most of them weren’t exactly visually appealing.

Imp89 wanted to develop a good casual game that would also impress visually. Once again, he worked with Kai’s Power Tools, drawing the objects by hand (digitally) and rendering them in 3D in Photoshop. He also used a light source for the entire scene. As in many games, it was located in the upper right corner (see Bauer 2025i). A new feature in the game was that not all blocks were the same size and did not have to be placed on a grid. The blocks could now be placed next to the grid or simply without a grid. This allowed for more variety in level design and, consequently, in the visual appearance. The levels were further virtualized. The game was developed in C.

The reviews from that time and years later by retro gamers are actually very good. In particular, the look and feel of imp89’s games were very well received. Most players were impressed by the unique, somewhat quirky style. As YouTuber Yesteryear (2018) writes: “With a look and feel that stood out clearly from other Macintosh shareware games of the ’90s, the titles from Imp89 (Impression89) for Classic MacOS were quite entertaining, as they incorporated some unique mechanics into the arcade games on which they were based.” And user @treehahn comments: “Wow. I’ve never played these games, but these are the weirdest Mac games—and some of the weirdest games overall—I’ve ever seen. The only ones that come close are Space Funeral and maybe Marathon RED.” (Yesteryear 2018).

Unfortunately, the Arkanoid variants were no longer selling well at all as shareware. The time had come to move forward. Java applet versions of BreakIn (1997) and Grotic (1997) were soon available. With this, imp89 had begun developing new games not only for the Mac but also for the web, and delving a little deeper into the design of interactive products (see: https://www.gamelab.ch/?p=12699 ).