[h1]Blocky Dungeon Review[/h1]
[i]**spoiler free**[/i]
[u]Quick Review:[/u] Blocky Dungeon is a fun twist on Tetris and dungeon crawling by blending the two together. Using Tetris blocks to create the dungeon you play through is a brilliant yet simple concept that is engaging and meditative. Unfortunately, the lack of saving run progress, along with buggy achievements, really hurts the longevity to an otherwise great indie title.
[u]Performance:[/u] FYI, the game was running my system harder than it should at first. I tried enabling vsync from the menu, but I’m not sure it really worked. I went to the nvidea settings on my system, set max frames to 60, enabled vsync, and set graphics to low in the game for good measure. Runs pretty quiet now.
[u]Gameplay:[/u] Using a Tetris grid, you build a dungeon for your knight to crawl through and slay enemies. Unlike Tetris, the blocks don’t come down on a timer (except for “survival mode”), meaning you can think through your moves. This slower pace really works with the strategy element behind the mechanics. Plus, it makes for a very zen experience.
Your knight has health, AP, attack power, experience, and curse meters. Health and AP increase capacity with level ups for your knight. AP determines how many tiles you can move, and how many attacks you can make. AP replenishes by 10 after each turn. A turn ends when you place a Tetris block. Killing enemies raises your experience and lowers the curse meter. Every turn you don’t kill an enemy, your curse grows. When it’s full, you take damage and it resets half way. Curse is always a threat, so keep an eye on it.
Attack power is more involved than at first glance. Killing an enemy with the exact same amount of health as your power level will increase your attack power by one for the turn, but resets after the turn. Ideally, you want to combo multiple enemies in a string of +1 health iterations. This is very hard to do, and typically won’t occur more than 2-3x a turn. There are boosts you can pick up that will give you a permanent +1 to your base boost for the run. So instead of resetting to 1x, you’ll reset to 2x.
There are a lot of different enemies, and it’s fun navigating through all of their effects. Bosses are also really a pleasure to fight. They all integrate well into the Tetris dungeon theme.
There is unfortunately no way to save a run in this game, which is a big problem for endless mode. More on that later. Just know that if you need to quit a session, your progress will not be retained. So it’s better to die to lock in any Coin you collected before quitting the game.
Coin doesn’t get you much. There are some skins you can buy in the endless mode shop. Purely cosmetic. You can also use Coin to buy items/boosts once in a while during runs.
There is a campaign mode with 40 levels. Each level has 1 required objective, and 2 optional ones. Later levels require a certain number of completed objectives to unlock. The campaign is just a series of catered levels. It was a fun mode.
There is also an endless mode, which was probably the original intent of the game. There’s classic, dynamic, and survival modes. I found dynamic the best, because you got to face bosses, and they drop sword boosts, which helps you scale with the enemy levels. However, I have my issues with endless mode (more on that below).
Overall, the gameplay is engaging, fun, and relaxing.
[u]Drawbacks:[/u] There are unfortunately a couple of big problems with Blocky Dungeon that really hurt the experience: no saving endless mode runs, and buggy/broken achievements.
Some of these achievements are impossible to get. First of all, they don’t seem to pop even when you do get them. I’ve done two achievements that have never popped. I got to dungeon level 127 (needed 50) on dynamic endless mode, and definitely did way more than 50 damage in a turn many times, and those two achievements never popped ("Carnage" & "Dun dun dun... geon").
Given that there is no save function, some of these achievements are ridiculous. For context, I had a run on dynamic endless mode where I got to dungeon level 127, personal level 17, and a score of 338,000. This was about a 3 hour session. There are achievements to get to personal level 50 and score over 999,999...in one run...with no saving for a session later... ("Big gains" & "Wow, score!").
Doing either of these two achievements is just impossible. First, the achievement might not even pop even if you do manage to do it, due to bugs. And second, even if you are talented enough to accomplish those achievements, are you really going to sit and play this for 8+ hours straight in one run? I wouldn’t. The run I mentioned above, I could have kept going for a long time in terms of skill. But the time requirement is just nuts. If there was a save option, it would be totally doable. But without it, it’s just a waste of time. I had to kill my character just to stop playing.
In addition, this game has bugs that can impact a long run. I had a bug occur with my run where one of the rows remained locked, even when I unlocked it. That meant I couldn’t clear it, which put me at a disadvantage.
Even if you wanted to grind these achievements out in the required one sitting, I wouldn’t trust the game to reward you properly due to the bugs. You could get screwed over hours in, or the achievement might not pop when you accomplished it. So I wouldn’t bother.
And that’s a bummer, because endless mode is kind of...endless, without a goal. I mean you could try to beat your high score. But you’ll probably tire out before you ever would have failed organically. So playing until you burn out and then everything but your score going away is kind of...disheartening.
It’s a fun game. But just know that the achievements are impossible and not worth your sweat. Play it for fun, and when you’re done, move on.
It’s too bad the achievements weren’t more reasonable, because it would be a fun game to beat some post-campaign challenges.
[u]Atmosphere:[/u] This is a very relaxing game. The presentation is very simple, so I wouldn’t call it immersive. But you can get lost in it because it is so meditative. And the music helps support that. It’s a zen experience with gameplay that keeps you engaged.
[u]Conclusion:[/u] Blocky Dungeon is a creative blend between Tetris and dungeon crawling that works really well at its core. It’s strategic, relaxing, and fun to pick up and play. However, it is really hurt by a combination of no endless mode saving, and buggy/ridiculous achievements. It’s a fun game, but it’s not very rewarding.
Do I recommend it? Mmm...Maybe. Just think of it as a short indie experience, and move on once you stop having fun.
