Blocks That Matter was picked up via a steam coupon. Though I'm fairly sure I've seen it bundled plenty of times too.

It's a platformer puzzler that just lacks... Something. Something to make this game fun. It works, and has some nice ideas. But I was mainly frustrated with how it all combined together just like the tetromino mini game it contains.

The story here is that two dudes from Sweden have had some success and are moving on to their next project. Some bad dudes capture them and tell them to finish their next game OR ELSE.

The issue? It is not a game but a robot. You play a game about this robot which is not a game, but that needs to complete games to move forward. In correspondence with your creators you gain upgrades as you make it through the levels towards them.

This is a series of 40 levels, with wildly varying difficulty. Never actually hard, but many times I just wanted to crack my head against a wall on how annoying it all was.

Your little robot can crack its head against wood, stone, and sponge blocks to break them up and gather them minecraft style. Sponge here works like sand and will fall down if there is no space beneath it, and rather than coming as one stack it falls one by one.

First job is to get a drill to gather adjacent blocks when on a platform of some kind. You get the drill almost immediately. There's very little progression reward until you have it that it may as well of given it to you right away.

After this you are introduced to different blocks. Obsidian can't be collected but behaves like sponge. Ice can't be cracked but will slide when hit. Iron and Gold have to be mined.

I'm sure there is more, but I have to be honest and say at the half way point I had given up on going any further. Even with youtube solutions to each level.

To place blocks back down you have to toggle to a different game mode where they are placed in tetromino shapes. Groups of four. Since each block behaves differently, there is some challenge in the order as they'll fall or stay in different ways.

If you can lay a group of 8 or more, including blocks already placed (though remember, the tetromino means you cant split up your placements) you can wipe them from the map.

If you get stuck or stuff it up. Holding down a button will reset the map so you can try again.

This, along with the difficulty varying too wildly makes the game harder than first expected. While your creators talk about you and monitor your progress there's no real feeling of reward. The player is dropped into some difficult situations early on, and the next area may take only a few seconds to figure out. IF you make it? A new Level!

Where's the progression? When are you teaching me what I need to do? You really don't do you. You even give a Big Scary Monster Chase level where you have to run to the exit portal while collecting blocks. Thankfully it does pause while you lay them down, but this type of tense and very close to death level feels out of place in how early it was given to the player.

Everything here feels so wonky, even down to the controls, that it really does not work too well.

The game is not bad or terrible. It is rather boring really, when it is not causing issues with how hard it wants to be. And it is not even that hard. It just feels more difficult than it really is. And that's a problem.

Personally, I'm a firm pass on recommending this one. There's much better titles out there.

Game Acquisition: Steam Coupon.
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 10 June 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: WindowsXP
Processor: Pentium 4
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL compatible 128Mo VRAM
DirectX®: dx90c
Hard Drive: 250 MB HD space
Sound: Integrated chipset OpenAL compatible
Additional Note: Java app, does not require it to be installed separately.