Boxley

Intro

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting reviewing this game to be an easy affair, but I wasn't expecting to a spend a bunch of days on trying to put this review together either. In fact, I've tossed more than a few rough drafts of bits and pieces of this review in the trash in order to come up with something I like. In a way this review is starting to drive me mad since I'm not sure how to review "Boxley" in a meaningful way since this game is a clone of Alexey Pajitnov's "Tetris" for the most part.

I suppose this game does add a story mode, but that type of mode has been added to things like "Match 3" games over the years as well. So the concept itself really isn't all that original, but that does allow me to discuss Sarenji's execution of that idea.

Story

In story mode you participate in a Tetris tournament against other blocks which could be interesting if you were merely dealing with zany characters going for the title of "Boxley Champion", but the game mars the narrative with over done RPG cliche number 3. And for those that don't a number three for me refers to a major character having amnesia. Especially if it's the hero. It's such a common plot point that it pops up in all kinds of works like "Phantom Brave" and "Riviera: The Promised Land". And I'm sure people could add an absolutely monstrous amount of titles to that short list. It's just that painstakingly common.

On the plus side a few of the characters are fun, but the limited amount of dialogue in this game means the various characters are also pretty forgettable. Which I suppose is a bit ironic considering the main character's memory problems.

Gameplay

In story mode you hurt your enemy by scoring points and when you've reached a certain amount they are defeated. Of course the game tries to make this more difficult by allowing your opponents to add blocks to the bottom of your screen in order to give you less space to make mistakes with.

Of course you can also play endless mode which is just bog standard "Tetris". And may be the preferred mode for some. After all, the narrative in this game is so cliche it actually hurts a bit to look at it. And I usually defend that sort of plot line, but this game really didn't need a story mode with a save the world plot line in my opinion. After all, it could have scraped by with you just trying to be the best Boxley player there ever was.

Controls

I'll admit this section feels kind of arbitrary to me since I like the default control layout, but that's probably because I'm used to play most games with my left hand manipulating the z and x keys and my other hand being used to manipulate the arrow keys. I've just spent that much time playing various RPG Maker games over the years that I prefer having the ability to rotate blocks with my left hand while I drop blocks into position with my right.

And I probably wouldn't have brought this up at all if the other reviews for this game hadn't spent time either defending or criticizing the control layout for this game.

Conclusion

"Boxley" is the best "Tetris" clone I've played in a while, but it's cliche ridden story mode may get underneath some people's skin. And Sarenji's decision to use the z and x keys to rotate blocks may drive some people up a wall if there used to playing "Tetris" with just one hand on the arrow keys. So this may be a game worth skipping over for some people. For others this is a decent way to acquire "Tetris" for free, but I'm sure there are plenty of free versions of "Tetris" available online.