Block’d

For everyone who enjoys games like Bejeweled, Block’d is certainly going to be something you’ll want to give a go.

Block’d is all about getting two or more blocks of the same colour to interconnect and then for you to select them and hit the fire button which will detonate them. You have two styles of gameplay, marathon and speed. In marathon, you have 25 lives, and your mission is to clear the level without leaving any blocks behind – for every block you fail to eliminate, you cost yourself a life, when all 25 lives are gone then your game’s over and your score’s tallied up! In speed mode, you’re going up against the clock in trying to eliminate all the blocks in the level. As soon as the clock runs out, your game finishes and again your score’s added up.

To be honest, the speed mode’s the easiest to do – although in truth, you don’t have to be careful about clearing the blocks in their entirety. This is because, if you just clear as many as you can within the 90 seconds given, you simply start the next level with the blocks you didn’t remove as well as all the others to round it up to the full complement. So in essence although I began  really trying to clear the level (and get the bonus for doing it properly), I found myself just pressing the buttons and moving the cursor around from left to right just to clear as many as I could in the given time. As each level re-starts the clock with another 90 seconds, you really could find yourself playing forever and ever without an end. Although this is quite promising for many ‘twitchers’ out there, if you’re looking to get more of a challenge I’d either try using more self restraint and attempt to play this properly or go for the marathon gaming session.

As mentioned, the marathon style is much harder as you have to try and eliminate all the blocks without leaving any remainders. Although you’re not playing against the clock, it can become a case of one false cursor move and you’ll end up losing.

The downsides to this game really are that it’s very repetitive and depending on the game you choose to play, you’ll end up playing forever and ever or just a few rounds if you’re not too careful. Although this game should rely heavily on logic and puzzle solving skills, it really boils down to a little bit of those components but mostly luck at the end of the day. Of course if you’re able to solve these levels and clear wave after wave of various pretty coloured boxes, then you’re eligible for MENSA!

Overall though the plus sides outweigh the negatives and you’ll easily find yourself mesmerised by the simplistic yet frustratingly difficult task of clearing all the blocks.

Rating 85%

Positives

Addictive and entertaining

Difficult to do correctly

Good for thumb twitchers and logic game lovers

Negatives

Repetitive

Easy and tempting to play ‘badly’

No option to change difficulty settings