Wow, doesn’t time fly? It’s been more than a couple of weeks (to put it mildly) since our last post, during which time lots of undoubtedly newsworthy things have happened. Unfortunately all of us here in the office have become hopefully addicted to an awesome Flash game, Bloxorz.
It’s quite a simple game to get your head around – you move a block around a platform floating in space, attempting to drop it through a square hole – but maddeningly addictive. There are only four controls – up, down, left and right - making us wonder if we’d see an iPhone version any time soon. A quick Google search later and it turns out… there is one already! Clearly, while we might not be well informed, our finger is well and truly on the pulse of mobile gaming.
Where was I? Oh yeah, switches. Bloxorz quickly introduces you to some basic concepts, and then uses them in ever more complicated combinations as the levels advance. Firstly it’s dropping your block down a hole to win the level, then switches of two different types; heavy x-shaped ones that require your moveable block to have its entire weight on them to activate, and soft octagonal ones that need only part of the block on them to activate them. Switches tend to toggle bridges between the floating islands that compose the level.
After switches it’s coloured tiles. Placing the entire weight of your block on an orange tile will cause it to break, your block to fall through, and your progress through the level maddeningly lost!
Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, the game introduces its killer feature. A switch that teleports your block into two different locations, simultaneously! Your block is split into two smaller blocks, each of which can be controlled independently by hitting the spacebar key (okay, five controls!) to toggle between them. Smaller blocks can only operate the soft octagonal switches, and can be joined back together again by moving both smaller blocks into contact with each other.
One thing you’ll really want to take note of is the passcode located in the top right corner of the window. Write that down – or, if you’re Rain Man, memorise it – and you can return to that level by entering it at the “Load Stage” screen from the main menu. Otherwise you’ll have to start the whole game again from the beginning, and I’m sure your boss wouldn’t appreciate the resulting loss of productivity!
