There’s no dishonesty, no deceptions, no caveats – big or small – in its pitch. A couple of sentences and above all else is putting itself at risk of dissuading rather than persuading those curious few to dabble in its gameplay. As developer Paul Schenpf states: “it’s a very small game with no goals, challenges or fancy features.” Does that make it immune to perhaps similar failings or drawbacks a vast majority of releases can be similarly critiqued on? Absolutely not, but the kind of game that is fully transparent and open about its miniature scale and seemingly-similar manner of scope, doesn’t come around that often.
How then to slot these types of games into a theoretical placement in one’s daily life. A game that, by its own admission, doesn’t necessarily have grand objectives to achieve or a figuratively long-and-winding road to progress forward onto. The Block is essentially a bite-size piece of an investment, yet at the same time one you can stretch out and extent to countless minutes, tens of minutes. Even an hour at a time. Without a definitive start and end point – outside the limits dictated by its five differently-sized plots of land – the opportunity is there to build, finish, start over, wipe the slate completely clean and go again. No objectives should mean no purpose, right? What motivation or benefit does this garner when The Block is stripped back of all but the most basic and minimal of city building-type simulation. Itself, simplified to a low-poly, soft-edged, semi-abstract snap-shot?
The reason, as much as it was the reasonupon first discoveryof this game a few months back, lies in that generative, emergent form of defining one’s objectives. Fill all available spots, but do so with a focus on balance and positioning of certain tiles? Perhaps find a way to orchestrate a layout without placing anything down on a specific set of tiles? I’d be lying if I said that there maybe isn’t some degree of favoritism and personal bias that makes this kind of self-propelled gameplay all that more enticing. But as minimal and short-run The Block may be at any one time, there’s a charm to the way the game attracts that more personal line of puzzle-solving thinking. Again, objectives the game at no point imagines for itself as a road-block or point for players to prove their worth. Instead, a result of one’s own imagination that a blank canvas and three randomly-assigned structures creates.
Which is essentially what constitutes the main tools of The Block. After selecting a desired size of terrain, players are assigned three types of objects they can place down. Often a tower of certain height, maybe two, alongside something like a grouping of trees, a park bench or street-lights. Selecting one replaces it with another randomly-assigned selection and the process repeats until all grid spaces are filled, or naturally, you grow tired and restart. Beyond orientating to point in a specific direction, this is precisely the limits of interactivity and editing players are granted The Block. There are no external factors, infrastructure or other elements to concern one’s self over. Like an indoor art installation, The Block’s “city” structures are exactly that: little more than models to order and rotate one’s camera around.
Perhaps that awareness on it being more a game to spectate than necessarily invest in explains the decision to go with this softer-edged visual style. Especially the way placing objects on a grid doesn’t materialize with some real-world thud, visually or audibly alike. But rather extrudes out, like these models and structures are carved out of sponge. Not least because of the way textures are applied on objects, making them seemingly some contradictory material that’s both sturdy and malleable alike. But it works, especially when the abstract void of its colored backgrounds – even at the smallest of grid sizes – doesn’t overwhelm too much for the gameplay to feel inconsequential. Especially if you find yourself in that self-generated, puzzle-thinking mentality.
Yet for those with a compulsive but manageable need to arrange accordingly, The Block speaks to such obsessive desires. In a way that provides minor moments of risk – especially if you’re intending your creation to be as truly symmetrical as possible – as to when and where best to plot specific objects and buildings. There’s no shying away from the fact the game is geared towards that specific subset of people; in as niche a sub-genre as this, carving said niche into an even tinier portion, does admittedly leave the game’s stature and longevity entirely bare to see. And The Block is by no means a long-lasting venture. For all the fascination on its tempting you to repeat the process of construction over and over again, its limited variety in plot sizes, object variety and even the differently-colored backgrounds could arguably have benefited from a wider selection.
Closing Comments:
Coming at arguably a fitting time of the year, The Block – simple and small in scale it may be – makes for an adequate palette-cleanser of a release. Balancing a stripped-back and minimal appearance with a gameplay loop open to self-propelled challenge-making. Its variety on object selection and grid sizes isn’t the most expansive. So quickly prone to repeated use and suggestions that a more substantial selection wouldn’t have gone a miss. Even so, for a game devoid of true objectives, progression or anything else you’d consider standard fare in most games, The Block does just enough in providing a fascinating short-burst of a clicker-type release. One whose simple premise but obsessive potential means that an hour spent in The Block is just as viable and likely an outcome as any number of minutes.
