Naive Town
A brand new Flash game just released by Naive.it, and this one is named NaiveTown. Building blocks fall at a rate determined by the difficulty level, and you score points by stacking 5 like blocks to make a building. The catch is you can move the blocks once they have landed by clicking on the right or left edge of each block. There are also power-ups you earn for each building built, such as: dynamite that blasts away one block from play; air strike that removes the top block from each stack in play; and demolition that allows you to remove a whole stack from play. It's a fun game once you get the hang of it, but Easy mode is so easy there is no challenge whatsoever. From the makers of Equilibrium, another beautiful game by Naive. Click.
This game is surprisingly good: at first I groaned (yet another Tetris clone), but it admits some kinda interesting strategy: you want to configure your skyline so it's easy to slide pieces around. Combos are a bit too hard though -- there's not that much interesting stuff to do in the game. The abstract game is somewhat fun, but the controls on this version are a pain: I think with a control pad it could work much better. And yes, easy mode is droolingly easy.
Someone should really do a version of this on cell phones: it's a well-paced and simple pit game (the game idea might be older than this -- there's so many Tetris-type games...).
Nils, I am actually surprised you liked NaiveTown! At first, I too thought oh dear... another Tetris clone. But giving it a chance revealed something about the gameplay that was not immediately apparent. A pleasant surprise.
Pretty fun once you get the hang of it, but no pause feature. From time to time, I like to leave the keyboard without having to start the game over.
the link has changed slightly, to: http://www.naive.it/games/naivetown/naivetown.htm
Thanks, Laura. I've updated the links above.
I just tried to play this game, but was unable to download a file required to play it. I got a message saying the file wasn't available for download....??
I'm currently getting a "403 Forbidden" message when I click on the link. Is it just me?
shostie, i'm gettin the same as well..
Update