Game Check: The Block – My City, My District, My Neighborhood… – News

“No challenges, no problems.” The Solo developer advertises with these sentences Paul Schnepf (Co-Founder of Islanders-Studio Grizzly Games) for his work The block. This check clarifies whether this approach is the right one for a city builder game or whether the game focuses too much on relaxation.

create, create
The principle of the game is quickly explained: We build a city on a square base. However, there are clear limits to our design options: The card size can be set in five steps between 3×3 and 15×15 fields. And on the isometrically shown area, the middle field is already occupied by a randomly selected building right from the start. But from this point we can switch and rule as we want. On the adjoining squares we place houses of different heights, marketplaces, trees, streets or church towers. Both the buildings and the view of the entire map can be rotated through a ninety-degree angle. In addition to the newly placed object, the surrounding fields are unlocked in order to let our town continue to grow.

Graphically, The Block presents itself simply: The buildings are simple geometric shapes, which always result in a coherent overall picture, even when distributed wildly on the map. When they’re placed on the map, there’s a nice little “crush” effect until they take on their final shape. But then even the trees or the market stalls no longer move in the wind. At the beginning of the map, the program chooses one of the two possible graphics sets, so that we can either build a more European city with a church tower or an Arabic-looking area.

The service is quick and easy

Only land in sight
Graphically, The Block presents itself simply: The buildings are simple geometric shapes, which always result in a coherent overall picture, even when distributed wildly on the map. When they’re placed on the map, there’s a nice little “squash” effect until they take on their final shape. But then even the trees or the market stalls no longer move in the wind. At the beginning of the map, the program chooses one of the two possible graphics sets, so that we can either build a more European city with a church tower or an Arabic-looking area.

But there are marketplaces and trees on every map. However, there are no differences in height or water. You only ever build on an empty, square, flat surface. Since the buildings all have the same space requirements, placement is quick and easy. The program always suggests a building, but we can change it with the right mouse button until we find something suitable. In contrast to full-fledged city-building games, however, The Block doesn’t offer us the option of saving a particularly successful map or removing buildings once they have been built.

If the map is completely filled or you feel like a new empty environment, you simply start on a fresh almost empty world with a different color combination. And that was the full game. There really isn’t much else to do. As already warned, there are no challenges and no problems. They probably fit neither into the concept nor into the download size of 97 MB.

The alternative city structures

Conclusion
The Block threw me into confusion with one decision: Above all, the mini-builder wants to offer relaxation. In addition to the simple graphics in muted colors, this is also ensured by the music with built-in city noises, which plays unobtrusively in a very short loop. So why isn’t it possible to remove buildings again, more precisely: to undo an accidental click? If I’m too careless, then suddenly there’s a church tower in the middle of my forest area or a street ruins my busy market square. But maybe that’s part of the concept. Maybe the program just wants to educate me to be less hectic. Because the player has discovered everything that The Block has to offer within five minutes at most, he can also take his time to design the perfect mini-landscape. Of course, everyone has to decide for themselves whether this is enough game content. My relaxation would be more helped by a mechanic or two that would make the action at least a little bit challenging. So I packed my things and I’m moving out of The Block.

• cottage farmer
• single player
• For beginners to professionals
• Price: 2.39 euros on Steam
• In one sentence: The lava lamp among building games