It seems that the increasing consumer acceptance of digital distribution has penned an open invitation for board and table-top family targeted games to make the leap from lazy Sunday afternoons and Monopoly rituals to consoles. Xbox Live Indie Games plays host to plenty of card and parlour games, but few approximations of the physically satisfying Jenga or Mouse Trap, presumably leaving the recognised branding of Hasbro et al for fear of libel and publisher repercussion. Marketed as a “family board game”, IncaBlocks is a newly created, block-based, competitive, turn-based puzzler for one to four players. Thanks go to FuncWorks for providing us with a review code for the title.
Each round presents players with 11 manoeuvrable blocks. Competitors (either human or computer controlled AI) take turns placing them within a three dimensional space while rules denote that each subsequent drop must touch at least one block of your own colour and that gaps cannot be left in the gradual, layered construction. There are six play boards packed with the game, each offering subtly differing vertical geography. Stacked pieces cannot break these invisible height boundaries, though capping a column flush with your colour is the key to winning. Scores are calculated in an aerial view with players fighting for their own colour’s dominance, in a hark back to the pen and paper arguments of the dot to dot box game.
You spin me right round, baby, right round.
Although initially confusing, IncaBlocks’ driving concept is easily grasped after a quick handful of rounds. The same however cannot be said for the games controls. Confusingly, movement of the blocks themselves is achieved using the right analogue stick while board navigation is assigned to the left. While IncaBlocks never asks for speed in decision making or placement, the awkward reverse remains an underlying niggle, presenting itself each time control returns to the individual.
Similarly, while it’s easy to appreciate the difficulty independent developers face in producing workable control schemes for unconventional genres, a good couple hours play brought me no closer to understanding the outcome of a rotational d-pad hit. Direction of rotational motion appears dependant on the angle of the left-stick’s panning, though angular subtleties unbeknown to me rendered a simple, directional press permanently oblique in its expected resolution. While you can grow gradually accustomed to the game’s counter-intuitiveness in control, it’s a blight on a concept which relies on simple ease of placement.
Texture Bank: Wood #11
While the overall graphical presentation of the title is serviceable, the blocks themselves suffer from extremely bland texturing with each player’s cubes coated in little other than identifying colour and slight grain. Sourced light and shadow play little part in illuminating dips in height meaning that indents in structure can be extremely difficult to spot, forcing the camera to whirl around like Lakitu gone mad in order to visually navigate terrain and understand the actual protrusions of your shape in hand.
The game appears to pluck fonts from the same generic bank serviced by almost every other title on XBLIG and thus has little identity outside of its logo; uninspired avatar use further cements it into a decidedly average mulch. Avatars appear for little reason outside of identifying the player in an increasingly dull HUD. A desperate trend leapt on by every other Arcade and Indie Games title since Microsoft unlocked the developmental door to the little den of disproportioned limbs and vacant eyes.
“Optimum Zen achieved!”
Here, avatars’ constant idling expressions only help to further highlight AI problems with computer opponents. In the closing stages of a match when block placement starts to become a tactical back and forth, working other player’s dwindling shape supplies to maximise score, “thinking time” for bots can sometimes exceed 20 seconds with no indication as to their guaranteed return. With zero visual aid, the waits themselves become painful as player again spins camera around the playing field wildly to prove that the Xbox itself is indeed still doing something.
Whilst generally sensible, choices made by computer controlled players are built out of strategy easily learnt and thus local multiplayer is the only real avenue to challenge. Indeed, on more than one occasion the computer surrendered a game early despite a plentiful raft of obvious opportunity, something unlikely to plague human players outside of slipping over the wrong face button in a patiently tired slump. Created with a skeleton staff of three, the absence of Live play seems easy to excuse. However, it’s difficult to skim entirely or overlook a component which, while no means game saving, would allow semi-enjoyable, competitive play with or without local, willing IncaBlocks’ fans.
A few other points worth mentioning:
- Even marketed at a meagre 80 MS Points IncaBlocks remains a tough recommendation to make.
- However, despite tough criticism, IncaBlocks is a far cry from the developer accused “modern day E.T.”
- This is not a game designed around longevity. There is no campaign or single player mode outside of individual matches: place your shapes, tot up the scores, enjoy your empty fanfare, rinse and repeat.
IncaBlocks is functional (if awkward), far from broken, suitably pleasant and yet somehow incites little more than a settling sigh, a yawning recline and a questioning “why?” Even without its downfalls, the mode-less, bare-bones package just doesn’t offer enough to garner trial conversion, even for fans of the limited, board game genre. The gameplay itself is comprised of a solid set of rules but wrapped in empty presentation: a single square of mid-range chocolate, dressed in plain single-ply tissue.
If sold as a physical product, it isn’t impossible to imagine a tactile table-top edition of IncaBlocks garnering a niche, slathering audience. It’s a shame that in digital execution it falls short in enticing the Family Game Night audience it so desperately craves.
You should play this game if…
…you and your friends are hankering for an action-less, pass-the-pad, block placing drudge.
Final Score
Dull, turn-based board game puzzler with predictable AI, flawed controls and a critical lack of content.
