Make your own My Game Space page and get 2 free games. details here
6.8 extra fun
Put on your imagination hat because you'll need it for this arcade puzzle game. You play as a ball that bounces around a dungeon, destroying red, blue, green, yellow, and orange bricks. (Good riddance to them, I say.) Only by breaking all the bricks in every level can you hope to escape and seek your revenge for being turned into a bouncing ball. Why the bricks must be destroyed is never explained, but we can assume it likely that these painted bricks are support bricks. Without them the dungeon will collapse under the weight of its monstrous evilosity.
Georg Rottensteiner programmed HitBlock as a tribute to one of his favorite games, Crillion. (That's an old Commodore 64 game about a ball on a quest to break colored bricks in a dungeon.) The main idea behind both Crillion and HitBlock is that the bouncing ball can only break bricks which are the same color as itself. Before it can break bricks of another color, you have to change the ball's hue by repainting it. Luckily, there are jugs of paint lying about that accomplish this for you.
Normally, the ball is always moving either up or down. If it hits anything it reverses direction, much like Radish Rabbit, a cartoon character that I just made up. You can control the ball's side to side movement, but you can't stop it from moving up or down. Unless you unplug your computer. (A science note: It's also possible to cover your eyes and ears and negate the ball. Unless someone else is observing it, in which case it will continue to exist.) There are special bricks in the dungeon that reverse this behavior. After hitting them, the ball will begin moving side to side and you will only have control of its up and down movements.
In fact, there are many, many special bricks in the dungeon. Playing HitBlock's tutorial levels is highly recommended.
Some bricks must be hit twice before they can be broken. Some bricks crumble so fast that the ball just plows through them without bouncing. I already mentioned jugs of paint that change the ball's color. There are one-way doors that only allow the ball to bounce through in one direction. There are colored tiles which only allow it to pass through if it matches their color. There are switches, keys, and locks... and colored switches, keys, and locks that can only be switched, picked up, and unlocked if the ball matches their color. There are treasure chests, and monsters. There are glass bricks which only monsters can break. I saw a movie once where a monster jumped through a window, so in this area the game is eerily accurate.
Some walls are secretly bricks that can be broken. Some walls are secretly deadly. (They have the touch of death. Very unfair and difficult in my opinion.) A much more common and obvious danger in the dungeon are walls inset with skulls, which kill the ball if it should bounce against them. Unless their color is different from the ball's... in which case they're as safe as a basket full of kittens and daffodils.
HitBlock is an arcade game that will appeal more to puzzle fans than anyone else. There are a vast amount of level sets available and the game can even connect to Georg's site and get more. Some level authors focus on the arcade aspect and make dungeons that require quick reflexes and hairtrigger response times to complete. Others focus on the puzzle factor and construct dungeons in which careful planning and sequenced destruction of bricks is the key.
The ball bounces quite slowly, which can make breaking all the bricks in wide open areas a bit tiring. (You can speed it up by holding down the spacebar.) The graphics and music are simple, and slightly out of date with all the modern whiz bang explosion that kids today can't get enough of, but they get the job done. You can even make your own graphics and put them in the game.
HitBlock comes with a level editor, so there's no excuse for not quitting your job/school and devoting your life to turning out fiendishly difficult dungeons for the poor little ball to bounce through.