You also went for a more soothing game, very nice change of pace from many of these entries being quite hard to play.
Summary:
Adherence to Theme
- You are trying to pack your Island full with blocks. Excellent!
Game Design
- It was quite fun, thinking about the different shapes Island Generates and where they would come in use for future Blocks to appear.
- Sometimes the randomness gets a bit frustrating, I've had Islands where I needed to re-roll the first batch, since one large piece's placing wasn't possible.
- This in mind, the player is quite limited in what he can do at this point. This is totally fine, for what it is at the moment, but if you plan on taking this game a bit further, you should consider some tricks the player could use. Maybe buying one off Upgrades to fill some Landmass or remove trees.
- Being able to rotate blocks is also a key feature of Tetris, so I was wondering if I was missing a button. The entire ordeal reminded me more of the old school Sim City for the SNES rather than Tetris, since fully packed lines didn't disappear either. Something to consider.
Originality
- It's a very unique twist on some old school games, that uses the theme well.
- It's played a bit safe. Almost sterile, which may or may not be on purpose to get it to be very relaxing. So there's only a small trade off.
- Maybe for the future you can go a bit off the rails with it. Maybe it could be a blend of Tetris and Sim City, maybe something else entirely, who knows?
Style
- Everything was very beautiful.
- The colors where quite excellent. and everything was clearly identifiable.
- The Atmospheric sounds fit the game extremely well and make for another layer of deviation from the original Tetris concept, where you have action packed music and race against the time.
Overall:
It was enjoyable and got me playing around for a great 20 minutes of relaxing fun. I'd like it to have a bit more leeway for the player though, right now it's kinda "use these or re-roll. Can't re-roll? Too bad!"