Digital Eel continues to pump out interesting games, each vastly different and more bizarre than the next. The latest game, Big Box of Blox is an arcade puzzle game - far removed from its previous arcade shoot 'em up involving a petri dish and an out-of-control organism. Prior to that they served up an excellent space adventure game (their best game to date in my humble opinion) called Strange Adventures in Space and an classic style arcade game called Plasma Worm. Why mention these games? Because Digital Eel's games all offer unique gameplay experiences combined with strange and sometimes bizarre themes. The Big Box is no exception. It's quirky, colorful, cute, strange and unique.
Their latest endeavor takes an old classic casual game concept, throws it in a blender and churns out an enjoyable but vastly different kind of puzzle stacking game with lots of interesting power-ups, hazards and strategies all glued together with some interesting themes that keep the game fresh and fun.
Big Box of Blox is a puzzle game that uses columns of themed blocks (in threes) that you try to match up horizontally or vertically. Unlike Tetris (which the game seems to be loosely based on), you can only drop the blocks in vertical fashion. players can adjust the blocks by hitting a key, changing positions within the column of each block until you get the combination you want. As you progress through a certain themed board, the game will drop the blocks on you faster, forcing you to quickly find the right block combination and drop it in the proper place. Depending on which board you play, special things will happen because each board has special blocks and affects that change the way the game is played. For instance in one board you'll have objects that explode when matched up, while on other boards you might have slot machine style blocks that do a variety of random things and in yet another you'll have blocks hidden behind doors.
The themed boards come in vanilla flavor (Flaming Peelout), Bloc Atak (featuring boulders and bombs - wee!), Groink (a Vegas style board with slot machines), Mushroom King (complete with pesky frogs that get in the way), Asylum Cubez (Jokers and cell doors with surprises hidden - just for fun) and the good old fashioned custom board that lets you mix and match aspects from various boards. The game ends when your blox reach the top of the board, just like Tetris. The overall goal is to get the highest score on each board, playing the game in several difficulty modes for an increasingly challenging experience.
Big Box of Blox offers some cool sound effects, for various aspects of gameplay like explosions, roulette sounds, squishy frogs and mushrooms that pop up, and the wonderful sound that blox make when they shatter. The game also offers theme music for each board, which can be turned on or off at your leisure. The game is played and navigated using the directional keys, which is a pretty straightforward affair. Blox doesn't offer too many options save the ability to adjust the difficulty, turn the music and background themes off and other little tweaks like that. The game is very easily navigated through and even easier to play. Overall the presentation is nice and the music fits in well with the overall theme of each board.
Big Blox of Blox is a nice casual game that can be played in a short bites or for hours on end - much like every other game Digital Eel has released over the past few years. If you like Tetris or puzzle games in general with a slight tip of the hat and a dash of speed challenges, then you'll want to give this game a test run (you can download the demo here). The price is right and the game is a lot fun. Much like Dr. Blob's Organism, Big Box of Blox is the kind of game that just about everyone can enjoy and appreciate. On the surface it comes off as a simple puzzle game, but a closer examination reveals that the game is devilishly clever.
