May 19
Yay! Steam added "Falling Blocks" as a tag! There's finally a place for tetris like games!!
Steam Store Hub
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Yay! Steam added "Falling Blocks" as a tag! There's finally a place for tetris like games!!
Steam Store Hub
Check out In The Court of the Falling Blocks on itch.io! It's my sibling submission for the Falling Block Jam 2025. :)
Bomberman: Panic Bomber
For the first Bomberman spin-off since RoboWarrior, Hudson Soft decided to take a crack at the ever-reliable “falling block” puzzle game genre, specifically ones in the vein of Puyo Puyo. It might sound like an unusual idea, taking a franchise that’s partially about destroying blocks and instead asking players to stack them for a bit before letting loose with their explosives, but Panic Bomber manages to establish a distinct identity for itself that makes it worth visiting even today. While some future Bomberman spin-offs failed to get more than a few iterations at most, Panic Bomber managed to get unique entries through the early 2000s and still endures to a small degree thanks to relatively recent ports on things like the Wii U Virtual Console in 2017 and the PC Engine Mini in 2020.
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Baku Baku
Sega has always had a strong foothold in the puzzle genre, thanks to long running franchises like Puyo Puyo and Columns. In between those releases, Sega made some attempts to inject the genre with new life and their lovable, oddball charm with games like ChuChu Rocket! and the Puzzle & Action series. Baku Baku Animal (just Baku Baku outside of Japan, which roughly translates to “chomp chomp”) was one such attempt, and much like ChuChu Rocket!, it never got the chance to become a franchise. Developed for Japanese arcades in 1995 by Sega AM3’s R&D Division, who would later become known as Hitmaker, it would be the team’s one and only shot at the puzzle genre. Taking notes from Puyo Puyo, it’s a falling block puzzle game with an emphasis on chaining together combos, but it stands out thanks to its spin on the moment-to-moment gameplay and visuals that are endearing and unsettling in equal measure.
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@applesfallingfromblondehair worked very hard on this with me. This piece is really the key to the whole look.
HOLLYWOOD star Taron Egerton is self-isolating following a Covid scare on the Scots set of his latest blockbuster.
The actor, 31, was said to have been in close contact with a crew member who caught the virus while shooting Falling Blocks in Glasgow.
A publicist for the film said they hope to have him back on set this week after he tested negative.
A spokesman said tonight: “Taron is isolating as a precaution but production continued.”
After he developed Tetris, one of the most beloved and successful games ever, Alexey Pajitnov was a hot commodity in the game industry. He got a lot of attention from other game studios that wanted to work with him on whatever he had in store next.
Eventually, he joined up with American publisher Spectrum Holobyte to keep doing puzzle games. The first thing he made for them was a 3D sequel to Tetris called Welltris.
And then he made a third Tris game... called Faces... where you make faces.
Faces is a pretty spectacular misfire. The game doesn’t even seem to know what it is, because the full title is actually Faces ...tris III, with the “tris” tacked on the end to remind people that, yes, this was technically a sequel to Tetris. Maybe it was just a marketing decision, but that doesn’t make Faces any less weird.
Faces ...tris III (read on The Obscuritory)
Faces was released in 1990 at the tail end of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union was being dismantled and the future seemed to point to an increasingly open world. Pajitnov himself, a Russian citizen, had begun visiting the United States, eventually moving there the following year. So in the same way that Tetris went all-in on the Soviet theme, Faces feels like it was inspired by everything happening in the world – a more cosmopolitan puzzle game celebrating our global diversity and history. But the mixed-up faces just look kind of terrifying. They have a vague body horror aesthetic that’s less playful than it is like Frankenstein.
As glad I am that this singularly bizarre game exists, I also can’t help but wonder about what new developers had their ideas passed over in favor of bringing this weirdass follow-up to Tetris into the world instead.
From 1993tris