2014 In Review: Wizard Blocks

Gizmog · Post by **Gizmog** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:26 am

Fair warning: I haven't played this genre of game before. I've seen friends play it on Spacebook, but haven't ever been behind the wheel myself. If I'm unfamilliar with the basic physics, I'm sorry.

Because of the Spacebook popularity of these kinds of games, I was hopin this would just blow my mind. Surlaw doin' voices, THE Moogle1 doin' the scripts? They could be printing their own money! After playing the game, I feel like they did a good job, but stopped short of possible greatness.

Firstly, the music. Every good puzzle game boils down to music. It's the part that really puts you into a trance, locks you into the action. No way Tetris sells eleventy billion copies without Type A, it's a song that everyone who played the game will remember. I *just played* Wizard Blocks and I don't remember what the music was. Some generic public domain piano stuff, maybe waltz time? Slooooow! I should feel like the most exciting slime in the world is happening, not like I'm bein sung a lullaby! I know it's hard to find a good composer, but it's a big strike to the tone of the game. I turned on The Ramones and replayed with the game muted, was more addicting. I wonder how much they'd charge these days... anyway, Surlaw's voice acting is good, but a little too subdued.

Puzzle Mode could definitely be extended. 16 levels is kind of puny, even if they are each pretty original and challenging. I think some kind of move counter and par system would make it more engaging. Lots of the puzzles can be solved a long tedious way and there's no reward for being clever. A minor bug report too, if you start puzzle mode again after having cleared it, the level gauge is glitchy. I didn't investigate deeply, but my gut feeling is that it creates new slices and doesn't clear the old ones properly. Nothing game breaking, but it looks sloppy.

Like everyone else has already said, Dig Mode is the real party and the mode I had the most fun with. There's a few bugs, but mostly it's very impressive. Every now and then it lags during a really big combo, which is probably inevitable. What's really really bad is that my score quits working most of the time on a retry, which for a game that should be all about high score is unforgivable. Why don't the high scores save, by the way? Even Spoonweaver does High Score tables and he's a habitual half-asser. Being able to see 'em all on a big menu and enter your initials would be more fun than just seeing one, especially seeing your score for each mode. I also think it would be better if there were a sense of progress to dig mode, seeing the dirt shift to rocks and then to lava in the background, but that's more of a personal preference than a legitimate beef.

By "real" puzzle game standards it falls a bit short, but for OHR this is a super impressive demo. I'd recommend it to basically anyone in the community, especially those who're curious how far scripting can take you and those who want to sell their games. It could be better, (even "real game" good) and I hope that Moogle1 will take the time to make it so.

Post by **Mogri** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:12 am

Did you download this recently? In my version, there are more than 16 puzzle levels, and the high-score-retry bug has been fixed. I'm wondering if I just didn't upload that for some reason.

Gizmog · Post by **Gizmog** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:15 am

Yeah, I downloaded it right before I did the review, same as I've done for everything.

Post by **Mogri** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:34 am

Hmm, I guess I never released it, then. Too bad.

The red block/blue block thing isn't a bug, by the way. Blocks only trigger in two cases: when you throw them and when they cascade from another explosion. The game never makes this explicit, but then the game doesn't make most of its mechanics explicit.