B is for Block'hood

I generally try not to buy games that are in the Steam "Early Access" program.  They are, after all, just what they sound like: unfinished, with no promises that they won't cease development entirely or that they won't become a different game completely, and yet ballsy enough to still ask for cash from the people who are, essentially, troubleshooting the game.  But I was feeling whimsical the other day and took a chance.

working on a challenge to create
Consumers in Block'hood

Block'hood is a city builder - well, more accurately, a neighborhood builder - in a limited amount of space.  It looked quite pretty; the reviews to date were "Very Positive"; it was only $9.99 US.

I wish I could say that I got $10 of enjoyment out of it.  I still might, but as it stands right now, I've little desire to play.

It's in very early stages right now.  There is a tutorial, a sandbox mode, and short series of challenges to play through.  But the game is hampered by a lack of clear instruction and a definitive description of game mechanics.

Access and Decay matter a lot in the game.  Access is whether the block as it has been placed has a clear path to at least one edge of the surface it's built on, but clear path actually means a connected path of other blocks which also allow access.  Some are obviously for that - such as the Corridor blocks - and some just function that way.  Access also doesn't mean what one might assume - that people need to be able to get from this block to other important blocks (e.g., from their apartment to the cafe); it only seems to mean that the blocks are "connected" in the right way which is no more than matching up the arrows on their sides to flow in the right direction.

Decay is a scale between zero and eight.  As near as I can tell, a block begins to decay when it does not have the resources it needs; if it decays eight times in a row, it falls in a heap and is destroyed and useless.  A fully decayed block can't be recovered - it has to be deleted.  (This is a problem if your decayed block is under another block, because blocks which are under other blocks can't seem to be deleted.)

This is where it becomes frustrating.  Blocks begin to work and so to decay (if their needs are not met) immediately upon placement.  If a block has multiple dependencies, getting those up and going (each with their own dependencies) before the block decays and becomes useless can be a real challenge - especially since you can neither place a block, nor browse the block catalog, while the game is paused.  Best to plan well ahead, I suppose.

But that mechanic robs me of quite a bit of fun.  It means I can't really place things in an attractive way a lot of the time, nor re-arrange things once I've got the basics going.  Other things which niggle at me include a number of misspellings and the like in the game text, and some graphical issues.  For example the "Wind Mill" which I'd really call a wind turbine, is two blocks tall, but does not stop you placing another block atop it; instead it merely sends its blades whirring through that apartment upstairs.

There choices I'd never make (fine, it's not my game), but which feel sloppy to me as well - for example, the "Small Apartment" is actually called  a "Small Apt".  It just seems that, you know, that might be spelled out since it's an important game piece.  That's me though; I despise abbreviations and acronyms where they seem to be wholly unnecessary.

The devs of the game do seem to care, and do seem to be active, though, so I will keep an eye on it.  As for providing bug reports and the like from my play, I doubt that I will - I think that's a one of those jobs that should be a paid one, or for which, at the very least, the testers shouldn't have paid to play the game they're working to improve.