Blocks That Matter

Tetrobot drills deep Blocks recycle into form Creators wait, trapped

It's a good game, yes, but this PC version doesn't support modern Xbox controllers, and that is a damn shame.

This game really makes you appreciate blocks. It’s a cool Minecraft-esque game, and it was a really interesting feeling playing it in the modern era, especially since it was made in such a different time. It felt somewhat nostalgic even though I’d never heard of it before! I think the goal was to make you truly appreciate the blocks, and it succeeded—even though some levels were messy and unfair at times, every level was unique in its own way, which is really cool.

Everything is a tribute in Blocks That Matter, but it’s by no means derivative; on the contrary, it spins the “Minecraftris” premise to a carefully tailored experience—and level/puzzles design here make it well worth its salt as heir of the giants whose shoulders it tactilely bounces from. The floaty jump is a problem though, one that pitifully shouldn’t be hard to solve. Unnecessarily “fixed” (its arc, that is) as every other (rightfully, on the puzzle side) aspect of the game, it surely pumps some involuntary replays into many platforming levels—especially where time is an issue, like those “running from Mama” boss ones. A lack of “undos” hurts the game more, but checkpoints wouldn’t be feasible with all the material management going around; implementing rewind mechanics in the gimmick’s infancy (moreso among indies) was prohibitively out of question in 2011. A solid puzzler as is, Blocks That Matter’s biggest value is the one of an artifact. It’s built upon previous gamedev history while acknowledging the names of those who came before—a particularly important of a role for a medium that’s prone to erase its own ways as it threads on (as easily attested upon realizing many…

This Game Matters

Puzzles are hard.