Game Review–Spinblox
My current favorite iPhone game is from BinarySquare. It’s called Spinblox, and it’s a match-three style game. Starting off, the game drops three rows of colored blocks, which you tap and move blocks around the screen to create rows and columns of three or more. As you level up, more colored blocks, and eventually iconed blocks are added to the mix, making it more difficult to create rows before the screen fills up.
***
I love this game. I play it obsessively, especially when I should be working instead. I literally am playing right now as I type this review. My only problem with the game play is there is no room for impatience in tapping the blocks. If you don’t put enough pressure on the screen, it won’t register the touch, which means the difference between level up or starting over. Other than that, it’s a simple, yet addictive game that has yet to get old for me, though I’ve been playing it for several weeks now and added it as a permanent icon to my home screen!
Tony said,
April 18, 2008 @ 3:29 am
What URL should I use to play the game?
funkyfresh said,
April 18, 2008 @ 9:54 pm
You can get to it and all iPhone applications by going through the iTunes website and looking for the web application link (it’s buried in fine print, unfortunately). Here’s the URL for the apps page on iTunes: http://www.apple.com/webapps/. It will be under the “Games” link. I actually saw some potentially cool ones as I looked on there when writing this post, and will be checking them out shortly!
funkyfresh said,
May 7, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
Update–I’m really disappointed to have to say that I’ve been experiencing a couple deal-breaking issues with Spinblox in the last few weeks:
1) The game can be extremely slow to load. Perhaps the makers are a victim of their own success, but I hope someone takes steps to remedy this.
2) I don’t have any more coherent way to say this but that the game wonks out after a few levels. Blocks won’t move, and mysterious holes open up in the playing field that never get filled, after which death comes pretty quickly. This is by far the more serious problem, as I might waste 30 minutes getting up to level 20, only to be killed by some game play bug. Until they come out with a version 2.0, I’m putting the “caveat emptor” seal on this game (insofar as no one actually purchases it, but whatever).
p0rth05 said,
June 5, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
This type of game is really hard to do in Javascript. The iPhone limits the run time of scripts to 5 seconds. There are less issues if you play the game on Wi-Fi. The good news is I have developed a native version for the iPhone that will available on the iTunes App Store after it launches. It’s has multiple game modes high scores and none of the issues the web version has. I will be uploading a You-Tube video soon. I am sorry for the frustration it has caused.
–Dan Bliss
President & CEO of Binary Square, Inc.