"Groovin' Blocks" for the iPhone Drops into the App Store
posted by Blake Patterson on October 25th, 2009 1:11 PM EDT in $1.99, Free, Music / Rhythm, Puzzle, iPhone games, iPod touch games
Early this month Empty Clip Studios gave us an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone port of their download / retail Wii rhythm puzzle title, Groovin' Blocks. Those anxious to get their hands on this one can now try the full [link] or lite [link] version, which went live in the App Store yesterday.
Each of Groovin' Blocks' 50 levels is played to a pumping techno soundtrack with scrolling beat-indicators on either side of the screen. Block clusters slide onto the playfield in a Tetris-like fashion, and will ultimately come to rest at the bottom of the screen. A tap on the 'drop' button will quickly drop the piece into place — but if you "hit a beat" (tapping the drop button during a beat of the soundtrack) the blocks will be bigger, brighter, and worth more points. Hitting consecutive beats without a miss increases your score multiplier — but miss a beat and it drops back to zero. Hitting the occasional Superbeat, shown brighter in the scrolling beat display, will double your current score multiplier.
Certain blocks contain power-ups that can be collected only if you hit a beat when placing said block. Power-ups are unleashed when the successfully placed block is destroyed by a match-three scenario.
See our preview video for a closer look.
[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]
GameSpot calls the Wii version of Groovin' Blocks "a music-based game like no other." As we said in our preview look, there's no shortage of match-three puzzlers in the App Store, but Groovin' Blocks' musical / rhythm component really does set it apart from the pack.
App Store Links: Groovin' Blocks, $1.99, Groovin' Blocks Lite, Free
This games does not seems like anything special…….Am I missing something ?
I mean this game……………lol
No. I tried out the lite, it's okay… the musical aspect wasn't really engaging. Dropping blocks on time or not only seemed to affect the score, it had no "feeling".
It's not bad.
But no burner either.
Unify, for example, is another league.
I love Unify but this just seems ordinary…the graphics, sounds and the music which is what makes it unique seems like nothing special.
Is it just me or do the graphics look a little weird on iPod Touch 3rd gen? Couple other games do this, too.
geoDefense and Swarm, rRootage and some other games that use similar graphics…
It requires 3.1.
yer that put me right off nabbing this. too much hassle to upgrade ma os from 3.01, takes hours on ma crappy pc sadly.
Tried the demo. Quite liked it would have been an insta-buy for 99c but I'm really having to cherry pick apps these days as I have too many and I need to catch up with what I already have. Will likely buy this at some point the responsiveness and precision of the controls for me feels way better than Lumines which REALLY needs a patch.
I tried the lite. The virtual dpad doesn't help. It needs alchemize or unify controllers.
Tried the lite and I don't like neither the controls nor the graphics. Skipping this, thought is was a poor effort for the Wii as well.