Today’s Game – 9/14/2009 – Plock (Facebook)

I came across this game over the weekend and became slightly obsessed with it. In all of the invites of friends to join social games, or compete with their scores, I ended up playing some Pixel Ranger by Metro Games. While poking around with their other games, I discovered a bad Pac Man clone and a typing game amongst others, however there was one that gained my attention.

Plock (Facebook)

The game is very simple, in that it takes the Collapse/Sega Swirl mechanic of removing groups of same colored blocks, with more points being awarded for removing larger numbers of blocks. In addition, there are multiplier and bomb pieces that spice up the game.

However, while the mechanic is dramatically different, the gameplay is a duplicate of Bejeweled Blitz. You’re given one minute to score as much as you can. This takes the game from being a strategy game to being a frantic reaction based game. While this does even the playing field for comparing scores, it does completely alter the way that the game is played. Also in the same vein as Bejeweled Blitz, pieces coming down will always result in at least one available match.

Looking at this, it seems that the one-minute frantic micro game is looking to be a direction that some single player, competitive games are headed. Is it a bad thing? It will be if there’s no innovation.