Blockster

I wrote a review of Blockster (in Finnish and sorry, no naked ladies on the marginals).

Blockster is a small dexterity game, where players are trying to stack small plastic pieces according to cards. There's a timer to add pressure! When someone fails, everybody else scores a point.

The basic idea is nice, but the game fails on few fronts. The timer is bad: if time runs out, the player in turn fails. Hmm... what if I wait on my turn and play my piece when the timer is just about to run out? The next player gets about two seconds and will fail. It's an ugly tactic, which nobody will use with their friends, but it gives lots of potential for arguments. Where's the border between slow play and deliberate stalling?

The blocks are very light and flimsy. That's not good, as it makes the game unpleasant to touch (compared to big wooden blocks of Make'n'Break, for example) and the towers wobbly. Well, that sure increases the difficulty!

Even if you forget the problem with the timer, Blockster is not a good game. It's just not fun to play and I can't think of a situation where I wouldn't prefer Make'n'Break. The game feels like something simply thrown together, without proper playtesting.