Blocks That Matter

  • Developer: Swing Swing Submarine
  • MSRP: $4.99
  • Kind of Like: Mario Teaches Tetris

Blocks That Matter has a deceptively simple premise. Playing as a tiny drilling robot, you’re placed into a two-dimensional subterranean world with the goal of getting to the exit portal. But rather than running and jumping your way to victory, you’re upgraded in the very first level with the ability to build structures from the blocks you drill through.

There is a plot to Blocks That Matter, but it’s hardly worth mentioning. Alexey and Markus, heroic indie game developers have been kidnapped by fans who want them to finish their next game. Enter the heroic Tetrobot, who begins the underground quest to rescue them and defeat the evil ambitions of the Slime Army that threatens the world above.

As you may expect, there are a few catches with this setup. You can only build with four blocks at a time, and only in the familiar Tetris piece shapes – in a sly nod to its obvious inspiration, a character makes a reference to the robot protagonist being programmed in accordance with “Pajitnovian physics,” after Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. You can’t drill while jumping. Some blocks fall when there’s nothing supporting them. If you take two hits from a Slime, the level resets. There are blocks you can’t drill, only destroy. And so on.

Every level has a finite number of bricks, and it seems obvious that the developers have a particular solution in mind for most of the puzzles you encounter. For the advanced player, every level has a bonus Block That Matters hidden in a treasure chest, itself placed in a hard-to-reach corner of the level. Your reward for picking up that bonus? A trophy, referencing a great puzzle game of the past. You can even destroy any eight blocks that all sit in a row in a manner that’s, well, Pajitnovian. This game is not subtle about its influences.

Frustration sets in when you just can’t see the solution to the puzzle in front of you. And because resources are limited in every level, destroying or misplacing the wrong block can result in having to start all over. Since this is a puzzle-platform game, that means that solving one level can involve doing the same tricky jump and solving the same tricky spatial reasoning problem over and over until you get back to the part where you got stuck.

I haven’t mentioned the graphics or music to Blocks That Matter yet. But that’s because neither are especially memorable. Tetrobot and the slime enemies are well-animated, but not exceptionally so, and the world is appropriately bright and cheerful, but the bar never really goes above “serviceable.”

Final Word: A worthy, if unexceptional, tribute to puzzle games past and present that’s best played in twenty-minute stretches.

Voxatron

  • Developer: Lexaloffle
  • MSRP: Unknown, still in alpha
  • Kind of Like: That next-generation Smash TV sequel you’ve always wanted

Even in its unfinished state, arcade-style shoot-em-up Voxatron shines with potential. Humble Voxatron Debut customers are eligible for access to all future releases, and that may turn out to be an amazing deal.

Voxatron gets its name from the voxels (sort of a three-dimensional pixel) that every item in the environment is made out of. It’s not the first voxel-based game by a long shot, but it’s the first and highest-profile in a long while. It gives the game a unique look, but the advantages are more than skin-deep.

Everything in Voxatron is constructed of voxels, which means that everything is destructible. In a memorable early level, two giant minotaurs spawn and charge at you – and when (if?) you dodge, they smash right into the doorway you came from, leaving voxel debris everywhere. The savvy player will lead them into the middle of the room, where you can trick them into knocking down giant columns with goodies and power-ups at the top.

Like The Binding of Isaac, the game uses a twin stick-style setup for shooting in eight directions. But in Voxatron, when you start firing in one direction, you’re stuck facing that way until you let go of the trigger. That’s convenient when strafing a group of enemies, but less so when surrounded.

In a manner reminiscent of classic arcade shooter Smash TV, some items drop items like sushi that are worthless except for bonus points, but you’re also going to get some really big guns. Even the deaths are satisfying: when Voxatron himself loses all three hearts, an immensely satisfying explosion takes out everything in the immediate vicinity.

There’s a main arcade mode, challenge maps, and even a fairly decent level editor in this early version, and who knows about the goodies in the full release.

Final Word: It’s too soon to pass a real judgment on a game that’s still only an alpha, but its unique look, destructible environments, and fast-paced action could make this the next Geometry Wars.

In conclusion, you may have noticed that I didn’t actually assign any scores to these games. That’s because the major point of a review is to tell you whether or not a game is worth purchasing. And when you can get all three games here by just donating the $5.25 average or more, the answer to that question as we enter the bundle’s home stretch is a resounding “yes.” And the fact that as I was writing this, Gish and a few other mini-games were added to the bundle? Well, that’s just gravy.