Review: Blocks Indie (XBL Indie)

Blocks Indie calls itself a "physics based racing game," but I find this description to be a tad off; however, I couldn't honestly come up with anything better. Physics are very important in Blocks, but the only thing you're racing against is the clock (or your ghost); you can take as long as you want. The goal is to carry a box to a designated area of sparkles -- possibly Edward's hideout -- and you do all of this by controlling a little platform. I feel like I am giving off a bad first impression, but let me say, Blocks is a fun little indie.

An obvious necessity in game like this is good controls. Thankfully, Blocks features just that, though they can take some getting used to. The way you control the platform is via left and right thrusters, which cannot be used simultaneously. This can be a bit difficult at first as it takes some subtlety and finesse, but it all felt rather good once I got the hang of it. I won't say it was perfect, but it was good enough to get the job done. For clarification purposes, I never felt like I was playing the controls, as opposed to just playing the actual game.

Nothing would matter if the level design was garbage. In the case of Blocks, the level design is good, not great, and does a good job at increasing the challenge incrementally over time. It is quite rewarding to get a perfect run on a later level. With all that said, you may want to look elsewhere if you get easily frustrated. Blocks shares ideas with games like Super Meat Boy and can get rather difficult as you near the end of the 65 total levels. I am not saying the game gets too difficult, I only believe it's important to know what you're getting into.

Blocks is not without faults. I, personally, find the artistic direction to be rather dull and boring. I know I tend to be hard on the visual styling of indies, but I come from an artistic background and it is my biggest pet peeve. I would have enjoyed seeing something a bit more stylistic, instead of the more realistic take. It would have also been nice to see leaderboards, but I understand the difficulties in adding such a system to indies -- it would be nice to see a little more support from Microsoft.

If you enjoy a challenge and want to support indie development, you can't go wrong with Blocks Indie. The 65 included levels will take a good chunk of time and perfectionists will be playing for hours and hours in attempts to 100% the game. Is it for everyone? No, but God has given us demos and trials for a reason. And if you don't happen to be a 360 gamer, Darkwind Media plans to release Blocks on PC, MAC, and mobile devices (iOS and Android) in late Spring 2011.