Face it, you’re a shapist. You have an unreasonable hatred of all things right angled, you can’t even stomach to look at those equal length sides and their exceptionally efficient use of space makes your skin crawl. You just wish you could kill every last stlink’n cube on the planet. Well lock and load son, ’cause now you can take out your homicidal tendencies in Michael B. Mclaughlin’s Xbox Live Indie game, Block Killer.

Gameplay

Block Killer is a 3D Shooter described by its developers as being “what 1980 thought we’d be playing in 2010.” Being someone that wasn’t even a zygote at the time, I really have no idea if this is true or not. I do, however, think it feels a little bit like Space Invaders literally turned on its ear.

The premise of Block Killer is simple: shoot the blocks before they get to you and destroy the world. How or why they are perusing global destruction is a bit of a mystery, but my guess is that they are tired of the world lording over them with its curved surface.

Controlling the game is accomplished using two inputs: the right thumbstick to move and the “A” button to shoot. You can actually use the right bumper to shoot as well, but really the button feels the most natural. Movement has a sort of “stick-to” element to it, so while you move you will stick to the middle of the block lanes. This proves to be a pretty key feature of the controls, and makes certain levels doable.

There are several different types of blocks with differing behavior. For example, armored blocks take twice as many shots to kill and tricky blocks will cloak and move lanes. In addition to the six or so enemy block types there are also beneficial blocks. These beneficial blocks can give health, slow block speed, grant double shot, make missed blocks grant health, or even turn your blaster into a machine gun. All these beneficial effects can stack, turning you into a one-man block-blasting powerhouse.

There are 32 levels and three difficulty levels in Block Killer. The levels themselves are shared between the three difficulty levels with the number of shots required to kill blocks, as well as speed of block progression, being used to adjust difficulty. The difficulty curve of the game is very jagged. Some levels will be breezed through on the first try, while others will be a significant thorn in your side.

I would have to say that my biggest criticism and praise for Block Killer centers around one particular aspect of the game, the power-ups. They are by far the most interesting thing that happens in the game, and when you get the machine gun going you just really start having a good time. That said, they don’t show up nearly enough, I think there was only really two or three levels where you were really able to cut loose and go to town blasting blocks.

Concerning replay value, I don’t really know how much of it the game will have. When you finish the game it ads a sort of marathon mode level that you can play till your thumb explodes, but really I felt pretty done with it by the time I unlocked that. It is a really simple game that in some ways just lacks a hook to pull you into the experience.

Audio/Visual

As I had touched on in the gameplay section, Block Killer seems to lack a hook. It doesn’t seem to have that thing that compels you to want to open the wallet for it and it is in the visuals department that I believe we will find our culprit in this respect.

I totally understand the desire for the developer to make a game look like a futuristic reimagining of a 1980’s arcade style game. My issue is that when a game’s gameplay is so simplistic that it is the visuals that must step up with an angle to bring the flare. Block Killer just doesn’t have it. What it does have are black backgrounds, solid color blocks organized within a 3D rectangular prism, and very basic blaster effects. It is important to note that I do not think the game looks bad, quite the contrary I think it looks perfectly fine. I just think that the game needed a hook and that jazzed up visuals may have provided one.

The audio is just as retro as the visuals are, with very digital sounding music and blaster fire. The music itself is quite good, it feels really arcade, in which case I think its creators nailed what they were going for.

Summary

So there you have it, the game is good but not great. It is a very simplistic game both in terms of gameplay and visuals and as a result feels as though it is missing that certain something that makes you want to keep playing it. At 80 Microsoft Points it’s priced just right for a brief diversion from thought.