Bloxorz!

I play a lot of “casual” web games, and the majority of them are pretty forgettable — either because they’re badly designed or because they’re unremarkable remakes of pre-existing arcade games that needed no further perfection.

So I was delighted to discover Bloxorz, pictured above. It’s my favorite type of simple game — something with a few simple rules that can be learned in minutes, yet yield endlessly complex and head-scratching puzzles. Basically, you have this block that you move along a grid, by flipping it upright on its tail, down on its side, or rolling it along on its side. Your goal is to make it to the end of each level, and this winds up requiring some crazy spatial reasoning that flummoxed me after the first ten levels or so.

I doubt this play mechanic is entirely new, but it’s certainly new to me! Really addictive.

(Thanks to Rock Paper Shotgun for this one!)


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I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson