The Blockheads (video game)

The Blockheads is a survival sandbox independent video game created by David 'MajicDave' Frampton, an indie developer and owner of Majic Jungle Software.

Overview

The Blockheads is made by David 'MajicDave' Frampton  The Blockheads is  available only to iOS and Android handheld devices.  It randomly generates a finite world that loops back to the starting point called the 'Portal'.  Players can explore their surroundings, navigate the sky and search for floating islands or circumnavigate the entire world map, harvest materials to create buildings, structures, even fruit farms and make crafting benches that enable the Blockhead to avail of advanced options in the game.  Aggressive and non-aggressive creatures also exist on land, underground and in bodies of water.  The game features a PVP (player versus player) option that enables players to attack one another in Multiplayer mode which can be accessed over wifi internet, with worlds hosted over Local Area Network, Game Center or Cloud Servers. The game can also be hosted via an app for Mac users, although availability of the world solely depends on the online status of the host.[1]

Gameplay

The player can 'warp in' a Blockhead through a portal, which is the only thing visible at the start of the game. There is a choice between male or female, with various unique features such as different hair styles or facial hair. There are no differences aside from the randomly generated name (which can be changed) and appearance. The blockhead has six statistics: Health, happiness, hunger, energy, environment, and when the health bar is depleted, death. The hunger and energy bar will constantly decrease, and the Blockhead must eat items to prevent the hunger bar from entirely depleting and affecting the health bar. The energy bar, when depleted, will result in the Blockhead walking slowly and 'collapsing from exhaustion' (sleeping on the spot). This can be filled by sleeping. The player must craft items to progress in the game. Crafting takes a certain amount of time, but this waiting process can be bypassed by using time crystals, which can be gained by watching short video ads, mining them in caves, or through in-app purchases. The player can do all sorts of things in their world, for example, build trains, railroads, and jetpacks to travel faster than on foot.

The player can choose to join online servers, and play with other players. They can be hosted in several ways. One, on an iOS device, the player can set up a Local Area Network (LmAN) world. The player can also use Gamecenter, if on iOS.

Due to a new update to the game, players can now create single player worlds or servers with custom options, such as custom health values, how the world is generated, custom sun colors, and even customizing the items blockheads spawn with.

The Blockheads also contains in-app purchases.

Reception

Rickey Ainsworth of Toucharcade gives the game a rating of 5 stars, saying that it is another one of many two dimensional versions of Minecraft, although it features many twists and turns that make the game exciting. ^[2] Metacritic, based on 5 reviews and 7 ratings, gives the game a 4/5 score. ^[3] Christine Chan of Appadvice gave a generally negative review of Blockheads and complained about the long crafting times. ^[4] However, this review is out of date, having been created in 2013 and not updated since, despite numerous updates to the game itself, including the crafting times being cut in half.

References

External links

• http://theblockheads.net/