Blockular
by Lew Reed on Wednesday 10th Mar 2010

I heard you like matching coloured blocks?

There’s only so many ways you can line up three or more gems and get points for it; Blockular is little more than another pretender wishing to capitalise on the market that PopCap has under its thumb. As If I needed to explain it, the game is about forming groups of blocks and making them disappear.

This time the catch is sliding in any of four directions to navigate your character’s block towards other unique blocks, or avoiding them - if you get a bunch of points then that’s cool too. The game never places much emphasis on high scores or does much to make the arcade mode worth investing time in. In story mode at least, the focus is on grasping the mechanics of the game in order to complete the level rather than set a record, and this actually works well based on one assumption: that this is a game aimed at kids.

The overall impression I got was something along the lines of an introduction to the idea of grouping up blocks to make them disappear. The notion that this is for a strictly younger audience is supported by the story and the game’s general aesthetic. While nothing special, it is visually engaging, though the characters themselves are uninspired and quite clearly based off the same template. The plot is helping Dudley, Jane and Albert find their friends by avoiding rocks in space and, well, eating cake – this is obviously a superfluous quality in a puzzle game, but the target audience might well appreciate it. With this in mind, the gameplay is very simple but does require some lateral thinking when looking at how blocks will move on the next turn. This alone may discourage an entirely child-friendly experience because it does complicate things in the later of only 12 levels.

As an extension of this tried and tested formula, I can recommend Blockular for a slightly new approach, but only because of its 59p price tag. Don’t buy the game expecting to get more than a half hour distraction, unless you’re particularly swayed by colourful cartoon characters collecting colourful cakes to save their colourful comrades.

Blockular is available now from the AppStore for 59p.