Sand Blocks: Blast Puzzle

many people had negative things to say about this game but honestly if i had this game as a kid i would’ve been OBSESSED. even now, 19 years old, i enjoy playing this game. when you clear rows of the same color sand, it does “damage” points to the enemy, but there’s no actual fighting, it’s all just health bars and numbers. And honestly i read a lot of the bad reviews before playing expecting negative things but most of those reviewers have no idea what they’re talking about 😭. One review said that the game is filled with ads and you can only play with an internet connection, but i played just fine on airplane mode… Another one said you can let the blocks fall in the center and easily win every game, but i tried that and it just doesn’t work because you have to strategically place different colored sand while paying attention to the next colored block or you’ll screw it all up. ANOTHER review said that the “fighting” aspect takes away from the fact that it’s clearly supposed to be a spin-off of tetris, but if it’s a spin-off, isn’t the whole point supposed to be adding something new/different??? There’s genuinely no reason why someone could dislike this game. It’s fun, it passes the time, it’s simple, some levels are challenging. Overall, definitely a good game :D

I only downloaded and began playing this for the first time just a few days ago, looking at the (apparently now very misleading) first of the preview images for this app, thinking "Oh cool, somebody finally made Sandtris playable for mobile/touch devices! But as most of the more recent reviews point out, that's how it *used to be*. I've played games before where gimmicky new mechanics are introduced or swapped in every few levels (think TwoDots), but doing that here kinda ruins the fundamental base mechanic of the game. What's worse—again, as some of the more recent reviews point out—is they this game is not the infinite-play-until-you-lose style one would expect from a Tetris-like puzzle game, but rather you're locked into a progression of levels. You can't even go back to an earlier level or just restart completely. You're stuck with one level until you beat it and move onto the next. On top of that, there are indeed weirdly unnecessary and annoying RPG characters at the top being affected by/affecting you just trying to play what should be a simple puzzle game, and they almost seem designed to even distract you at times from paying attention to the main gameplay. I'm only up to level 42, but my enjoyment of this game started to diminish greatly around level 20. I've retracted my suggestion of this game to friends I made just a few days ago, and told them I'm stopping playing it to go see what other Sandtris clones/ripoffs are in the App Store that seem to be plentiful, in hopes they're not as bogged down by unnecessary elements and ads as this one is.

I enjoy this game quite a bit. I’d like to give it 5/5 stars but I’ve reached a point where the fun is limited by poor level design. After about level 60, the amount of item drops you need to clear becomes too large to complete an entire level without paying for special items and extra moves. I’ve been stuck on level 64 for a week now. I’d rather not have to pay real world money to buy my way past the level, but the level design forces this. The special items do not drop within the 120 given moves, which forces the player to buy continues if they want to reach level 65. Game is worth the $5 for ad free. It would be a 5/5 if a player could continue to advance without spending more real world money.