Hello Xbox enthusiasts. I wanted to come over and say hello. As an XNA GS MVP like The ZMan, I'll probably be popping in here a bit more often to help out and things, but right now I wanted to take a minute to plug my Xbox LIVE Community Game: Bloc.

Bloc is an interesting approach to top-down shooters where we replace the old dual-analog approach and instead make the game centered around matching colors to fire your different orbs. For instance, to shoot a blue orb you press the blue X button. To fire green, it's the green A button. And so on. This makes the game not only a challenge in the usual sense, but challenges you to think in a whole new way.

We also have a fun co-op mode where one player controls a circle with only yellow and green orbs and the other play has red and blue. This provides for a very fun co-op experience where you have to work with each other to stay alive and rack up a high score. Unfortunately we weren't able to incorporate LIVE support so the co-op is local only. If this game does well enough, we will likely make a Bloc 2 with full LIVE support for co-op and other modes.

The game is already available on the marketplace if you have the NXE, and for those without the NXE it will be available as soon as you hop on the NXE. As with all games, there is a free trial you can download and the game is only 200 MS Points to unlock the whole thing. Unlocking the game lets you save high scores so you and your friends can compete to see who's the best on three difficulties. In addition, unlocking the full game helps support indie developers such as myself so we can keep trying to make you better games.

For some more details, a few screenshots, and a little video, head over to http://www.metacreaturegames.com/bloc/.

---

Nick Gravelyn
Super Gravelyn Bros

Definately a nice simple idea but, judging from the video on youtube, probably not juicy enough to spend money on. Makes more sense to me for games of this fashion to get their revenue by including ads in them.

 Malrinth wrote:

Definately a nice simple idea but, judging from the video on youtube, probably not juicy enough to spend money on.

Well, hopefully you at least reserve judgment until you play the game. Our game isn't the most fantastic looking game, but that's because we hide half the challenge in mastering the controls. And for a minor consolation, that video is a bit old and the difficulty has been increased making that mode quite a bit more fun to compete with your friends for scores in.

200 MS Points is like spare change and it does help support indie devs. But at least play the demo. If you still don't think it's worth your money, by all means don't pay for it.

Makes more sense to me for games of this fashion to get their revenue by including ads in them.

Without trying to derail my own thread too much here, there is no mechanism for releasing a free game so all games will cost 200, 400, or 800 points. In addition, these games cannot possibly be supported on ads because there is no way to click the ads. Therefore ad companies have no metric on which to base paying people. What works for web-based games likely won't work at all for this system because of this.

---

Nick Gravelyn
Super Gravelyn Bros

When I'm playing Bloc, I feel like I'm playing a mixture of the XBLA Feeding Frenzy and XBLA Smash TV. Co-op makes the experience more interesting and great that color matches the controller buttons.

Today Ars Technica had an article called Meet your Xbox Community Game launch titles in which in called Bloc the "best game to hit Community Games". I'm so thrilled to see such a positive response from the press about a game I was a part of making. Hopefully with the NXE out you can all go get the free trial and see what you think of the game.

Also, Xbox.com has expanded the forums to include a forum for each Community Game so if you want to discuss Bloc, see who has the highest of high scores, or report any issues you have, check out the new Bloc forum.

---

Nick Gravelyn
Super Gravelyn Bros

I like the concept it seems pretty interesting. However the controls just begin to get confusing. When you rotate the  your controls rotate with it, so Y could fire left for example. It ends up being confusing and meaning you have to think about stuff rather than naturally be able to string together shots. Often I ended up pressing buttons to shoot just to find out which fired in the direction i needed as it was the quickest approach.

Interesting though! Definitely one of the better and most polished games on the service atm. Bit disappointed with the early lineup but hey it is early afterall! None of the games so far have really tempted me to buy them. Bloc seems nice for only 200 points. 200 point games are certainly appealing, 400 is stepping in XBLA territory where the idea of paying 400 for an unpolished "okay" game when I could get Worms for example or others for the same price.

However I'm sure there will end up being some absolute gems which cost 400.

---

Founder & Co-Leader of Game-Pad UK Based Mature MultiPlatform Gaming Community - www.game-pad.net

Nick, you're happy to be apart of? You basically MADE that game (with some help from your bros.), don't lie to these people. LOL. Just kidding. I'm proud of you. :)

 The Zedox wrote:

Nick, you're happy to be apart of? You basically MADE that game (with some help from your bros.), don't lie to these people. LOL. Just kidding. I'm proud of you. :)

Heh. I like being a tad bit modest. I did all the programming, but my brother did all the art. And my other brother was there to ridicule me for user experience stuff and to crash my game (he was QA afterall).

---

Nick Gravelyn
Super Gravelyn Bros

hello, I just wanted to say I bought this game. I like it!

And as far as online support goes, it isn't the lack of online co-op that bugs me, as much as the lack of online leaderboards.  (And that goes for most of the community games so far.)  Only a few seem to support leaderboards.  Does Microsoft charge more fees for something like this or is it just hard to code?

Thanks.

 trueXavier wrote:

Does Microsoft charge more fees for something like this or is it just hard to code?

Microsoft doesn't support any online leaderboards. Any game that has them had to implement a peer-to-peer system of sharing data between Xbox 360s. That's how Biology Battle did it. I chose not to support that because it isn't a true online leaderboard. Only Gold accounts can use those leaderboards and it only works on a peer-to-peer level meaning you aren't guaranteed to have the same leaderboard as your friend or someone on the other side of the country.

---

Nick Gravelyn
Super Gravelyn Bros

I really think this game would be amazingly good for shmup experts that can also handle complex controls. Unfortunately I'm not one of those, so I never rotate.

Still I enjoyed this game :) Well worth the cash.