Blockout is a
puzzlePuzzle video games are a genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles to be solved can test many problem solving skills including logic, strategy, pattern recognition, sequence solving, and word completion....
video game, created in 1989 by
PolishPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
developer -
California DreamsCalifornia Dreams is a defunct Polish computer video game developer that published games between 1987 and 1991. It contributed to the development of computer games in the late 1980s with titles such as Blockout, Street Rod, and Street Rod 2. These were the precursors to "GT" for The Sony PlayStation...
, designed by Aleksander Ustaszewski and Mirosław Zabłocki. All copyrights belong to California Dreams, represented by Lucian Wencel.
The game is the logical extension of
TetrisTetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov. It was created on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow...
into the third dimension. In regular Tetris, the player manipulates a set of
tetrominoA tetromino, also spelled tetramino or tetrimino, is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally. This is a particular type of polyomino, like dominoes and pentominoes are. The corresponding polycube, called a tetracube, is a geometric shape composed of four cubes connected...
es which fall into a two-dimensional pit (seen from the side).
Blockout is a
puzzlePuzzle video games are a genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles to be solved can test many problem solving skills including logic, strategy, pattern recognition, sequence solving, and word completion....
video game, created in 1989 by
PolishPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
developer -
California DreamsCalifornia Dreams is a defunct Polish computer video game developer that published games between 1987 and 1991. It contributed to the development of computer games in the late 1980s with titles such as Blockout, Street Rod, and Street Rod 2. These were the precursors to "GT" for The Sony PlayStation...
, designed by Aleksander Ustaszewski and Mirosław Zabłocki. All copyrights belong to California Dreams, represented by Lucian Wencel.
The game is the logical extension of
TetrisTetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov. It was created on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow...
into the third dimension. In regular Tetris, the player manipulates a set of
tetrominoA tetromino, also spelled tetramino or tetrimino, is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally. This is a particular type of polyomino, like dominoes and pentominoes are. The corresponding polycube, called a tetracube, is a geometric shape composed of four cubes connected...
es which fall into a two-dimensional pit (seen from the side). The aim is to solve a real-time
packing problemPacking problems are one area where mathematics meets puzzles . Many of these problems stem from real-life problems with packing items.In a packing problem, you are given:...
by forming complete rows, which then disappear and score points. Poor play leads to incomplete rows, caused by inefficient arrangements of tiles; these rows do not disappear, giving the player progressively less space and less time to play subsequent pieces. Similarly, in Blockout, the player manipulates a set of
polycubethumb|200px|right|A [[Chirality |chiral]] pentacubeIn recreational mathematics, a polycube is a polyform with a cube as the base form. Consequently they are the three-dimensional analogues of the planar polyominos...
s which fall into a three-dimensional pit (seen from above; the pieces appear in the foreground and fall away). The pieces can be rotated around all three axes, and moved horizontally and vertically. The aim is to form complete layers.
Game modes
The game allows the player to choose the set of blocks they will play with and the size of the pit. Pits range from 3x3x6 to 7x7x18, giving a total of 195 possible pit sizes (counting e.g. 3x5x6 and 5x3x6 as identical). Three block sets are available — flat, basic, and extended — making a total of 585 possible game modes.
Under "Main Menu", three of the possible 585 game configurations are recommended to the player. These are called "Flat Fun", "3D Mania", and "Out of Control", and use the flat, basic and extended block sets respectively. Other features of the game include:
Demo mode: This is not a pre-recorded game of an expert playing, but a well-programmed
botA bot, most prominently in the first-person shooter types , is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player. Computer bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison,...
that plays a good game in any given setup. The bot finds smaller pits and more complex block sets more difficult, and achieves correspondingly lower scores.
Practice mode: A game where the pieces do not move down with time. The player can manipulate the pieces for as long as they like before dropping them into place with the space bar. This is very useful for beginners learning to navigate the 6 keys required to rotate in two directions around each of three axes. Practice mode scores are not recorded in the High Scores file.
High scores
The
Blockout Halls of Fame list the top ten scores ever in each one of the 585 permutations. Scores can be submitted to the site, and the high score database is updated about once a year. World rankings depend on number of appearances in these tables and scores achieved, suitably corrected by "M-factor", which captures the varying difficulty of different game modes. A world championship is held each year in Germany, usually in
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
in November.
There is also a new realtime
online high score database. Players can upload not only their high score, but also their entire game, and watch
replayReplay can refer to:*Replay , a replayed match in between two sport teams to decide in case of tie or conflict resulting from scoring, officiating, fouling or other factors...
s from others. This allows players to learn by watching the playing and stacking techniques of other gamers, and to identify possible fake high scores.
Polycube block sets
Flat
The flat block set consists of polycubes that all fit into a single layer. These are effectively just two-dimensional
polyominoIn recreational mathematics, a polyomino is a polyform with the square as its base form. It is a connected shape formed as the union of one or more identical squares in distinct locations on the plane, taken from the regular square tiling, such that every square can be connected to every other...
es with thickness added, and include all but one of the members of the n-polyominoes up to n=4. (The tetromino consisting of four squares in a row is excluded.)
Basic
The basic block set consists of the seven polycubes present in a
soma cubeThe Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube...
, all of which are polycubes of order three or four:
Extended
The extended block set consists of all n-polycubes up to n=5. This is a block set with 41 members, consisting of the single cube, two cubes together, the 2 tricubes, the 8 tetracubes, and the 29 pentacubes.
Critical reception
The game was reviewed in 1992 in
DragonDragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The final printed issue was...
#181 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.
External links
- http://www.blockout.de Website with a blockout game download, high scores, world championships and a guestbook
- http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/blockout.htm Information about different Blockout Releases
- http://www.3dtris.de/blockout_essay a Blockout Essay from Igor Vukomanovic about Blockout tactics
- http://www.blockout.net/blockout2/ GPL version of the original BlockOut