Fallblox
|
3DS
| Fallblox

Last year's Pullblox was a fantastic bolt from the blue, dealing up over a dozen hours of tasty puzzles that had me sitting back with a smile time and time again.

So the news that the 3DS's best game was getting a sequel had the effect of both inflaming my ardour and making me silently wary. Pullblox doesn't appear to be the kind of experience you can expand on.

Developer Intelligent Systems decided to prove me completely wrong, creating a beast that's both familiar and new. Mallo is about to eat up your time all over again.

Bang crash wallop

Fallblox, or Crashmo in the US, takes you back to the world of Mallo, Papa Blox, and their park full of blocky structures and weird gadgets.

Each level throws a pile of blocks at you, all stacked on top of each other in a variety of permutations, and all you need to do is push and pull them in favourable directions before climbing on top and securing the bird that's resting at the summit.

Where Pullblox was simply about pulling and pushing blocks to make your ascent, Fallblox throws a spanner in the works by making said blocks fall to the ground rather than hovering in position.

As you'd expect, this makes the game a very different affair, even though it looks incredibly similar to the original. There's now a lot more work to do on the ground before you even begin climbing, and you're able to spin the camera 360 degrees and tackle puzzles from whichever angle you choose. Of course, you're still able to rewind time, so messing up a solution is never frustrating.

What makes this such a great series is that it hasn't simply rested on the laurels of the original concept with a straight sequel. This new block-dropping idea breathes even more life into an already great setting, and comes away all the better for it.

No fall from grace

As with Pullblox, there are gadgets provided throughout the game that help to keep the action fresh.

Some are old favourites from the original game, such as the potholes that allow you to jump in one end and come out of the other, but new abilities - such as the doors and the directional arrows - lay even more twists on the core concept.

And all the while, you still get that incredible feeling of awe when you finally cotton on to a particularly brilliant solution. Fallblox is full of these moments, and finding the next big eye-opener is what spurs the game along.

Where Fallblox doesn't quite match its predecessor is in its level selection. Pullblox had a variety of regular levels mixed in with nifty picture stages, whereas Fallblox just goes with straight regular levels. This means that after 60 odd levels, everything begins to sort of look the same, and there's not such a thrill in opening up the next new set of conundrums.

There's still the level editor, which is fantastic, and on top of that Intelligent Systems has expanded the options menu, giving you access to more special training-style levels, and a silly bit where you can talk to the birds you've saved.

Fallblox is exactly what we were hoping for in a Pullblox sequel, and provides yet another essential download for the Nintendo 3DS eShop. Put simply, you need this game in your life.

Fallblox

If Pullblox was the game that pulled you into the series, Fallblox is the game to make you fall in love with it. Awe-inspiring
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.