Inside Skwizzo® Block Jam: every block has its exit
Skwizzo Block Jam is the first mobile game from Quaradur Industries, and it is time to describe it for what it is. Not a list of features: the feeling of facing a jam and finding the thread that unpicks it.
The rule fits on one line
You open a level and find a board that is already full. Coloured blocks wedged against one another and, along the edges of the frame, openings that are coloured too. There is a single rule and you learn it in three seconds, without anyone explaining it: a block leaves only through the exit that matches its colour. The pink piece goes to the pink opening, the green one to the green. You drag, it slides, it is gone. That looks like the whole game.
Block Jam, literally
The hard part is not knowing where a block has to go: that much is obvious. The hard part is that there is almost always something in front of it, and that this something is itself blocked by a third piece. A jam, precisely: the name of the game describes the exact problem it puts in front of you. Skwizzo is invented and means nothing in any language, but Block Jam says everything. The same move that opens one gap can close another, and the fuller the grid, the more you can count the good moves on one hand. The best moment is when you stop trying things at random and see the whole sequence at once.
A thousand levels, none left to chance
Nothing is automatically generated. The levels are designed one by one and lined up with a clear idea of where you are at that point. The first has three pieces and a single move, just to teach you the gesture. Much further along you meet boards that are completely full, where there is only one good road and a hasty move is enough to close it. In between lies a long, steady climb: every level asks a little more than the one before, and never walks it back.
The things that turn up along the way
The game does not put everything in front of you at level one. It waits, and when you are ready it adds one element — just one — and gives you time to get the hang of it before the next. One-way blocks arrive, sliding in a single direction and forcing you to plan the route backwards. Blocks buried under layers that have to come off before the piece will move. Pieces tied to each other, that leave together or not at all. Locked gates, with the key somewhere on the grid. Ropes to cut. Exits reserved for whoever has picked up the star. And bombs, counting the seconds down with no intention whatsoever of waiting for you.
The clock, and what we did with it
Every level has its own timer and your best record stays written beside it. We did not put it there to rush you, but to give the right move some weight. A level solved first time with ten seconds to spare is one thing; the same level replayed to shave off twenty seconds is another, and they are two different satisfactions. Then there are the moments when the jam really does close up, and for those there are three helpers: freeze, which stops the clock for ten seconds; hammer, which takes out the block you choose; magnet, which clears every block of one colour in a single sweep.
A game that waits for you
Lives refill on their own and nothing pushes you to come back sooner than you want to: you open it when you feel like it and close it when you like. Playing unlocks block skins, and linking a Google account carries your levels from one phone to the next — but that is your choice, not a requirement: it plays perfectly well without signing up for anything. Purchases exist and they are optional; everything else opens simply by going forward.
Where we are
Skwizzo Block Jam is still in development, for mobile and starting with Android. There is no release date, and we will not announce one before we are sure of it. When there is, you will find it on this site before anywhere else: in the meantime we will keep writing here about how it is going, and the project page has the rules in short along with the first images.
Skwizzo® Block Jam
Our mobile block puzzle: every block has its exit, the hard part is getting there.