I used to be a blocks enthusiast. That was back before the year 2000, when I was playing a game that shipped with Dos Navigator. I absolutely loved it, and spend more than I like to admit playing it.
Years went past, and I haven’t played blocks. Until a few months ago, when I did a Google search, looking for something similar to what I was playing back then. I found a few competitive games and the official ones on the main blocks website. But I felt like I didn’t fit in – things moved on since the days past.
Now we’ve got numbers everywhere, projection of the falling piece, explosions, many players games, new mechanics, and way too many ads everywhere. It’s all fun and nice, but I needed something that would be more calm, closer to the experience that I was remembering.
However, I do love the idea of competition. I think when 2 people are looking at each other’s gameplay and see how close they are to winning, it’s when magic happens. I also watched the official blocks competitions, where 2 blocks experts were batting each other, all in a really tense and sport-like atmosphere, but I felt something was missing – the impact of their actions towards the opponent, seeing yourself getting closer or drifting away from winning.
That’s when I decided to start working on the lit-up.io platform.
Knockout is actually an identical replica of a text-based game that I wrote long time ago, that was quite popular with my colleagues. The idea that you were not playing on points, but rather on the state of your board, looked really engaging and it also was fun to watch by others. This was also the first lit-up.io game.
Pursuit is similar to knockout, without the lift-up effect, but with the caveat of outrunning your opponent by a number of completed lines. I did this game because some people might enjoy playing the game for longer, while Knockout seems to finish in about 1 minute, even with perfect play from both sides.
I’m working on some fresh new ideas of gameplay, still based on competition, but all in good time.
I hope you have fun on our platform, will be back soon with an article about our gameplay and controls.