Blocky McBlockFace

I want to be honest with you, because nobody else on the internet seems to have bothered: Blocky McBlockFace is about as bare-bones as a game can get while still technically functioning as one. You control a blocky character from a top-down perspective, and you shoot other blocks with a weapons arsenal the store page describes as 'crazy' with a confidence that the actual content does not quite support. That is the game. There is no story, no escalating challenge curve, no handcrafted world to wander through. It is a minimalist arcade shooter stripped down to something closer to a game-jam prototype that found its way onto Steam. What I can say in its faint defense is that the concept has a certain deadpan self-awareness to it. The title is a riff on the Boaty McBoatface meme, the whole thing is dressed in cartoon geometry, and the Steam community has noted with some amusement that the game manages to become laggy within a couple of minutes of play on anything less than a reasonably modern machine, which is its own kind of accidental comedy. The achievement list, surprisingly, runs to 49 entries, which is more creative investment than most of the rest of the game suggests. If you are an achievement hunter scraping the bottom of the sub-dollar bin, that is probably the most honest reason to be here. The top-down shooter genre has genuinely wonderful entries at every price tier - tight twin-stick feel, meaningful weapon variety, escalating enemy patterns. Blocky McBlockFace does not offer any of that with conviction. The 'arsenal' amounts to basic projectile options, the enemy variety is block-on-block, and there is no sense that the pacing was designed so much as left at default. I care deeply about whether a small game knows what it is trying to be, and this one seems uncertain on that question. A six-hour game that knows when to end is something I will champion loudly. A game that may not last six minutes of meaningful engagement is a harder case to make. This is a first and only release from BicBoi Bangers, and with eight or nine total user reviews on record across its entire lifetime, it is genuinely one of the quietest corners of the Steam catalogue. I do not begrudge a solo developer putting something out. The pixel-simple geometric aesthetic has a rough charm, and the cartoon color palette is at least inoffensive. But charm alone does not carry a game, and there is simply not enough mechanical substance here to recommend to anyone who plays shooters regularly. This one is for the completionists, the meme-title collectors, and the curious who need to see it for themselves.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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