BlockOut

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Blockout
Studio PZ Karen Co. Development Group
Publisher California Dreams
Rainbow Arts (Atari ST)
Senior Developer Alexander Ustaszewski, Mirek Zabłocki
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1989
platform Amiga , Apple IIgs , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , MS-DOS , Mega Drive , Lynx , Mac OS , PC-98
genre Skill game
Game mode Single player
cube

BlockOut is a computer game published in 1989 by the Polish programmers Alexander Ustaszewski and Mirek Zabłocki, which expanded the principle of the game of skill Tetris from two to three dimensions in an innovative way .

Gameplay

The player looks from above into a shaft with a rectangular floor plan. Three-dimensional blocks made up of several cubes appear at the upper edge of the shaft and slowly fall down, while the player can turn them around all three spatial axes and move them sideways. As with Tetris, the aim is to arrange the blocks in closed layers like a puzzle - as soon as a level is completely occupied, it disappears and the blocks above slide down. The game is over when the remaining blocks reach the top of the shaft.

Blockout was published in 1989 by the California software company California Dreams and Rainbow Arts . It was the first official Tetris variant that did not appear on Spectrum HoloByte . The name Blockout is a registered trademark of computer games company Kadon Enterprises of Maryland .

Despite the high demands on spatial imagination and the complicated controls, Blockout was commercially successful and has a fan base that organizes tournaments and, among other things, tries to make the MS-DOS version of the game error-free with modern graphics cards and Windows versions To get going.

The positive influence on the spatial conception of young people (10 to 14 year olds) could be proven in 1993 in a scientific study.

Official and unofficial versions of the game were released for numerous platforms, including a. also for modern ones like Palm OS , Flash and Java .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NOSS, A. (1994): Promotion of the spatial conception of 10 to 14 year-olds through the computer game BLOCKOUT. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna.