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February 8, 2021

Quick Review: Blockstorm


What if Minecraft was a multiplayer FPS? Okay, that's not entirely accurate, but still - cubes everywhere.

If you can create it with cubes,
then you can play it in this game.
Blockstorm
, a game created by GhostShark, published by IndieGala, and released on May 21st, 2015, tries to answer to that question. You can customize everything. Literally everything. Create new maps, modify your base character’s shape through the use of cubes, and create your own weapons and mechs all out of cubes as well. This is all so you can watch everything be destroyed under a barrage of bullets during the game proper. I can at least commend this game’s creativity options. As long as you can make something with cubes, as many as you think you need, then you’re good to go. The store page even shows some amazing examples of that creativity, showing that if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can make some pretty cool things.

"We're the Copyright Infringement Gang!"

The common rule of (being bad at) an FPS:
Shoot at everything and hope you
score a kill.
The actual FPS part now? Well, there are no single-player options. I get it; that would defeat the purpose. The game does have six options for multiplayer games: The free-for-all Deathmatches, the team Deathmatches with red teams going against blue teams, classic “Capture the flag” missions, as well as other modes called Assault, Castle Battle and Hunt. So, a lot of options, if you can actually get a match going in this game’s that almost six years old now.

Yeah… It’s a fairly small name on the list of multiplayer FPS games, so good luck finding full rooms to play in, unless you know you’ve got a circle of friends playing it as well (and even then, said friends might be more interested in playing more famous titles of the genre). I struggled to find servers where there was anybody, and the only server that seemed to have a decent amount of people was, as far as I can tell, a game between friends so I was booted out. Yeah…

Pictured: Not something I actually experienced.
Too late for that.

"I got my custom face, I got my custom gun,
I got my custom mech. I'm ready for the
world! .................where's everyone???"
I guess I can at least praise the options for customization, even if I never really got to appreciate the gameplay part. Running around an empty battlefield isn’t all that great. Didn’t get to shoot at any other player. I did get to run around a lot and shoot at blocks. Can confirm, you can destroy everything. I do wonder if it means that you can destroy enough blocks to effectively weaken structures and, potentially, break large elements of the battlefield. It’d be good if it was a possibility.

With that said, I guess I’ve already run out of things to say. Based solely on my personal experience, I can’t really recommend it. Not sure either if I should tell people to buy it, seeing as it’s got such a small player base by this point… its busy days are pretty much over. I probably should’ve played it back when I acquired it, back in 2017. Right now, I can't say it's worth buying, unless you can somehow play it together with several of your friends.

Blockstorm is available on Steam for 4.99$ USD.

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