Block Party EGOS is a 3D Tetris style game where up to four players take control of falling blocks simultaneously to try and score the most points before the round ends.
Players may use either the keyboard and mouse, or joypads to control the falling blocks.
Keyboard and mouse uses the arrows keys to control the block, "a" to spawn a new block and "z" to rotate a block. The mouse is used to control the camera.
Joypad uses the analog sticks to control the camera, d-pad to control the block and A to rotate.
When a player matches a row of 5 or more blocks, they get 2 points for every block of their colour destroyed, and 1 point for every other block destroyed. Any blocks touching the destroyed blocks, or that fall as a result change their colours to match the player's colour. Occasionally a random grey block will drop, this block belongs to the computer!
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Niiice audio. I really enjoyed your sound effects. And the 3D-ness was really cool too. Gameplay was a wee bit confusing, but interesting once I understood it.
It's a very neat concept! I wish I had some friends to play it with right now. One critique though, I wish I could move the tetronimos from side to side a little bit easier.
Thanks for the feedback guys, we're definitely looking at expanding on the concept - including adding an AI, more world sizes for larger groups of players, more kinds of blocks etc.
So I played this one player. The game definitely seems like it would be a lot more fun with multiple players. Moving a block left and right was a bit difficult. Also, its hard to tell where your new block is until it is about halfway down, due to the camera angle.
Good stuff. I only tried with mouse and keyboard, but it was kind of a pain to manage the camera and try to get the pieces around.
It would be nice to either hold a key and have the block spin quickly around, or have the camera swing around to the next block when the current one has touched down.
Interesting multiplayer concept. We played 3 players. Sharing the control of the camera among the players was confusing. Seems like some players were not able to rotate the pieces.
Good sound and interesting take on tetris style game. Seemed a bit hard but like most LD games its experimental so you have to build it to see what it would be like. Impressive stuff.
Thanks all! We'll definitely make the control system easier to use with the next version, especially regarding the camera control. Please do criticize to your hearts content, all of your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Nice take on Tetris, but even though I'm quite good at Tetris, I found this very hard. With the round 3D, it is difficult to see where your piece will land. I would suggest adding a "ghost piece" to help out. It also starts out way too fast to give me any time to consider where to drop the piece, and taking it all the way around to the other side is nearly impossible in the time provided.
Camera management with the mouse is hard because I'd like to use my right (dominant) hand for controlling the blocks. I also don't see how it would work in multiplayer -- does everyone get their own corner of the screen? What might work is a "flattened" top-down view, basically a ring with axial and radial segments, where the blocks fall inwards. Equivalent game, simpler presentation :)
The music is fun and adds to the atmosphere, but the sound effects seem to come from another game.
I'm home alone so I can't try multiplayer at the moment, which is too bad because the mechanic sounds great.
Thanks Frozen Fractal, the music is original but the one-shot SFX was pulled from FreeSound with about 30 minutes left on the clock :)
We tested the game with some colleagues and they echoed the same issues you did, and also suggested a ghost block mechanic. I'm personally thinking that with the one screen game mode (as opposed to say, true multi-player over LAN), it might be good to restrict the area in which subsequent shapes spawn which the camera can then focus on, and have the game gradually shift that area around the world.
I needed three hands to play this game. One to rotate the piece, one to move the piece, and one to move the camera. It would have been nicer if piece rotation were tied to a mouse button. As it was, I just picked a spot on the screen and stayed there, not using the mouse at all. If a piece was on the far side of the play field (or worse, the left or right side), I just gave up trying, if I couldn't move the piece to the front of the my view quickly. Which was another difficulty: holding down an arrow key only moved the piece once, not repeatedly at the maximum rate. Made it annoying to try to move a piece to a region of the playfield that I wanted.
But I only played this single player; it would likely have produced a more interesting experience in a multiplayer context. I imagine it could get pretty hectic with four people, which would have been a good opportunity for extra elements that would fit a high intensity and fast paced mood.
One small note: I find it better to round the displayed time *up* rather than *down*, so that when there is only a fraction of a second remaining, the timer says "0:01", and the exact moment the timer actually reaches zero is also the exact moment that the display says "0:00".
This is an interesting take on multiplayer. With only 1 player, it doesn't really work, since you'd need 2 hands on the keyboard and 1 on the mouse. As others have said, a ghost piece on the ground would help clarity a lot. Cool stuff!
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It would be nice to either hold a key and have the block spin quickly around, or have the camera swing around to the next block when the current one has touched down.
If you make rotate the camera from left to right on the keyboard will be awesome.
Camera management with the mouse is hard because I'd like to use my right (dominant) hand for controlling the blocks. I also don't see how it would work in multiplayer -- does everyone get their own corner of the screen? What might work is a "flattened" top-down view, basically a ring with axial and radial segments, where the blocks fall inwards. Equivalent game, simpler presentation :)
The music is fun and adds to the atmosphere, but the sound effects seem to come from another game.
I'm home alone so I can't try multiplayer at the moment, which is too bad because the mechanic sounds great.
We tested the game with some colleagues and they echoed the same issues you did, and also suggested a ghost block mechanic. I'm personally thinking that with the one screen game mode (as opposed to say, true multi-player over LAN), it might be good to restrict the area in which subsequent shapes spawn which the camera can then focus on, and have the game gradually shift that area around the world.
Thanks very much for your feedback!
But I only played this single player; it would likely have produced a more interesting experience in a multiplayer context. I imagine it could get pretty hectic with four people, which would have been a good opportunity for extra elements that would fit a high intensity and fast paced mood.
One small note: I find it better to round the displayed time *up* rather than *down*, so that when there is only a fraction of a second remaining, the timer says "0:01", and the exact moment the timer actually reaches zero is also the exact moment that the display says "0:00".