Review: Blokz
Score:
71%
Version Reviewed: 2.00
Blokz is ZingMagic’s take on the decade-old game of Break-thru (first seen in 1995 on the NES) from Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. Everybody must be familiar with the original concept by now, it has been re-interpreted on many different platforms, in many different forms, including several Java and Symbian versions: you have a wall of blocks to get rid of - if you click on a block that is part of a group of at least three blocks with the same colour, the whole group disappears and lets gravity do the rest of the work. The more bricks you eliminate with one click, the more points you receive as a reward. Your goal is to clear the screen so you can start it all over again as long as you have at least one group of valid blocks to click away.
There are three different modes to play the game, on three different difficulty levels, which gives us nine slightly different slices of the same cake. The difference in difficulty levels means that you have either 3, 4 or 5 different colours on the board at the start of the game. Game modes can be Relaxed, Timed or Frantic. In the first mode you just play and play as long as you can, as fast/slow as you want, the only way to lose is by ending up with a bunch of blocks which have no neighbours of the same colour. 'Timed' is a little more stressful, you have limited time to finish one board, so a new way to fail in the game is by running out of time. The 'Frantic' mode gives you not only a time limit but you also get another counter which destroys random number of blocks at random positions after a certain number of eliminated blocks giving you an extra thrill of uncertainty.
All the usual 'ZingMagicy' features are present in this game, including the good ones, like the detailed statistics, decent animation, Symbian signed status, availability in 5 languages, adjustable volume, compatibility with every available screen size and orientation, responsive controls, bug free operation, changeable skins and backgrounds (well, you can mix ’n’ match from 2 backgrounds and 2 block skins). Also included are the not so good ones: no demo version, no startup screen, no full screen play, no in-game help, no key configuration, no online scoreboards. These features might not be relevant to ALL games, but they are fast becoming basic expectations of today's gamers.
The game itself is a nice little time waster; we may have seen more complicated versions of this idea in the past with all kind of extra items, bombs, different board shapes and sizes, but Blokz in its simplistic approach is a fairly solid (although not the best) member of ZingMagic’s wide range of puzzlers for S60 3rd Edition.
Attila Katona, AllAboutSymbian, 17th August 2007
Reviewed by Attila Katona at