Reviews of Mobility Games – Pushy and Pully in Blockland

Copies of reviews provided by Resistance Studio.

Packages and pully in Blockland are 2D sprite games developed and published by Resistance Studio. It has a strong retro aesthetic and gameplay is clearly an award for some of the most classic games such as bomberman or unattractive. This is the story of the two characters that crashed into a strange planet called Blockland where their spacecraft parts were stolen by some strange creatures. To recover them, you must complete the level by defeating the enemy. You do this by encouraging various types of blocks to it. There are several additional elements, such as the battle of BOS, matching 3 blocks of the same type to get power-ups and the possibility of playing cooperatively with other local players or long distances using steam remote playing features.

With the basis, let’s check the accessibility of the title. I played on a PC using a keyboard.

Arrangement

The first thing you will see when running the game is a classic launch window. Here you can choose a resolution, activate the window mode and adjust the graphic quality. This last setting does not seem to do anything, and input cannot be returned here. That is not a problem as we will see later. The main purpose of this launcher is to give the option player to use windowed mode because it allows you to play using the keyboard on the screen, which is needed for many people.

The Dinavigation menu uses the default key until we repeat the year, then it will work here too, which is something I like. The menu that is driven by the mouse or the ability to map back to the launcher will also help. The only exception is the control screen where moving the cursor is done through the arrow button, no matter what we return the key.

After the main menu, we can go to the settings by choosing gears. Here we can change the language of the game between English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

The speaker icon provides access to separate volume sliders for music and sound effects. There is no sound acting so there is no need for subtitles. All story elements are told through a sketch style image.

Finally, we reached the control section, clearly shown by the gamepad icon. Here we can change the buttons and gamepad or set the controller to each player. Remapping works well, you can even determine up to two different buttons for each input, but the method is rather clumsy.

You choose the action and press Enter, then you select Replace and just press the button/button you want to use. Even though this is all good, there is a five -second time limit to press the button. This is something that I have seen in other games, and recommending to drop as people with disabilities that are different from low mobility to cognitive may have problems with it.

To return to the menu, you have to suppress escape or control, once again a general practice that cannot be accessed by many players because of this key placement. Having a back input to map will be ideal.

The rest of the option shows us unlocked achievement, the ranking board and the last icon is out of the game.

Gameplay

This game consists of a one -screen size level, with a block acting as a wall to make a labyrinth. You have to clean the enemy stage by pushing the block and hitting them.

These blocks have different forms of written shapes, such as bombs, diamonds, stars … When you combine three or more blocks of the same type in vertical or horizontal lines, blocks join the powerup. For example, the bomb block makes a bomb that you can push and it will explode to kill all enemies in a close area. This mechanic adds variations and in some cases is a key element to defeat several levels. Enemies offer a variety of good abilities and appearance, need thoughts to avoid and clean them.

Every 10 levels you have to defeat the last boss, bigger and harder, and while the general method is to hit them several times with blocks they offer a good balance for pleasure and challenges. You have a limited amount of time to clean each level, and fail to do it will cause a very annoying UFO to appear that will chase you and destroy you with energy rays.

You have 3 life and after that, you can continue as much as you want. Anvisi that to continue you have to press the Enter button, the same you must use to stop.

After you defeat the boss, your progress is saved and you advance to the next zone, with new graphics and enemies.

You can then return to the previous zone and choose what stage to be played back to get a better score, get a higher ranking or just for fun.

Okay, with everything that is explained, let’s look at the control. This is the default key but as I mentioned before, everything can be mapped again.

• To move you using four directions. By default, this button is WASD.
• To push the block that you just faced in the direction you want to push and press the push button, control or whatever you like.

And that’s all. This retro game has a very simple control, which is very good. There is no complex combination, resistant or time, good points in terms of accessibility.

Conclusion

This game can be very fun, and the style of art and mechanical like returning to time when the game is simpler but not easier. If you play an old bomberman or snowbros, you will feel an instant connection, almost nostalgia. Two players must try, as in that mode that the game really shines and is not just for entertainment.

A slight time limit for problems, especially when playing alone, makes several stages feel impossible until you find out always more than just a way to complete the level. This is also why the mode of two players feels not only more funny but better because it reduces busy at several levels. Having a mode with more time or no time limit will definitely help, even if you can always stop to rest and think. This is where other problems play a role, the hardcoded entrance key needed to stop. The escape key to return in the menu must be repeated too. On this Over / Advanced game screen is even more important, and I highly recommend at least having a message that shows that the key is needed to continue, because pressing the push button will make the count back faster. The fact that progress is only saved after defeating the boss can make some running long, and I will recommend having at least the option to save after every two levels to let people continue the game later because of time constraints.

On the positive side, the control is very simple and friendly, with a recake for the keyboard and controller button (the controller button can only be re -made on a PC). Also the possibility to play using a keyboard on the screen thanks to windowed mode and free mouse cursor is a very welcome option. Playing like this is a necessity for many people so this makes the game more inclusive.

All in all that forced and pully in Blockland are games that require some small improvements for low mobility gamers, but if the problems mentioned do not represent a barrier for you, it offers a lot of ancient fun.