Shooting Blocks
Score: 75% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Adore Games Developer: Adore Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: Shooting Blocks is a fun physics-based puzzle game that offers numerous challenging levels that any fan of the genre should want to try out, and what's best, it's free, which is great for a casual game like this. As far as visuals are concerned, Shooting Blocks is pretty static. While there is a foreground where your blocks appear and a background, they are pretty much the same throughout the game's 50+ levels. The overall look is that of a winter wonderland, and since the blocks you are breaking look like ice, I guess that's a fitting theme. The game's background music and sound effects do their job, but aren't essential to the overall gameplay. This, of course, means you don't have to have it on in order to enjoy Shooting Blocks, a must for any game you might want to try and sneak some play-time in during work hours ... not that I condone such activity, of course.
Gameplay: Shooting Blocks is a straightforward game that has you trying to clear a platform of ice blocks. Each puzzle is a stack of blocks, some with pink coloring in the center, and some without. What you want to do is to destroy all of the non-colored blocks while losing as few of the pink-centered ones as possible. The physics aspect of this game comes as you destroy blocks and cause the ones above them to fall. Like I said, the premise is pretty basic and works well. You have a certain number of lives in each level, and that is the number of pink blocks that can be destroyed before you have to try the level again, and any left-over lives you leave the level with get carried over to the next one. Shooting Blocks even throws in the occasional power-up. These come in a few different flavors that range from extra lives to freezing the blocks in place for a short time and even temporarily adding some walls to either side of the platform the blocks sit on in order to keep anything from falling off, causing precious points/lives to be wasted.
Difficulty: Shooting Blocks is broken up into three level packs, a name that hints at the possibility of downloadable content. These are "Prolog," "IceAge" and "IceCream." Nothing really changes much between the three packs besides the difficulty of the puzzles. While each pack seems tougher than the previous one, there are definitly some towards the end of "IceAge" that are easier than the early levels in "IceCream." In general though, I found that pretty much all of the puzzles presented required at least a couple of attempts, if nothing else, then just to get a feel for how the blocks fall and how they are supporting each other. As a result, even the easier levels can take a few attempts. As for the harder ones, I found they often required that I click a couple of blocks at the right time as various pieces are still falling, so they don't throw other pieces in the wrong direction.
Game Mechanics: Shooting Blocks is basic in its design, and while there have been several other games that play like this one, fans of the gameplay style are always looking for a new set of challenges to take on. Shooting Blocks uses a basic point-and-click system that makes the game accessible to pretty much any level of gamer, but it is obviously geared towards the more casual type. In the end, Shooting Blocks is a fun puzzle game that those who like a good physics-based challenge are sure to enjoy. The number of puzzles and wide range of difficulty means that this game will take some time to beat, but a lack of any replay value makes the game more or less a one-time bit of fun. Of course, given the game's free pricetag, it's hard to argue at least trying it out.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, 800 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 100 MB HD Space, DirectX 8.1   Test System: Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c
Related Links: Shooting Blocks Official Home Page
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