Block Out!: A Flawless Execution on an Emerging Genre

It is always exciting to see a veteran studio release a new game. Grand Games has always had a unique, spatial approach to puzzle games, and their newest title — Block Out! — is rocking up the top charts across app stores. They are iterating on a genre with their unique approach and getting almost every design choice correct, which fuels their explosive rise to the top. Today, we are going to break down some of these choices from core gameplay loop to monetisation systems and highlight some best practices that you can take away for your own game.

An Old Puzzle Genre Becoming Popular

Block Out! is part of a puzzle sub-genre I label as “sequencing games”. Your goal as the player is following a series of actions, usually in a specific order, to clear out the play area. It is by no means a genre new to Grand Games; they already have Magic Sort and Car Match in their portfolio, among a myriad of others as the core game or a mini-game in others in some cases. Recently developers realised the core puzzle itself is so fun that the theme (e.g. car park clearing) and art (2D, colourful) are less important - everybody just loves sorting out a mess! This meant the sequencing genre had many recent entries with the puzzle as the focus: Arrows, Hexagons, etc. all abstractions of the “theme” in favour of focusing on the gameplay.

Choosing a Different Path

With the market getting crowded and everybody throwing their hat in the ring, how does Block Out! differ? There are a few game design choices that differ from the others in the genre; and the most important of those is the fail condition.

The majority of the sequencing games have focused on the number of moves as the limiter, with subtle variations. Sometimes you have a certain amount of “lives”, or other times a certain number of moves you have to clear the board by. This is actually fundamentally problematic for sequencing games because the correct solution / minimum number of moves is predetermined. You can theoretically (and usually) end up one-shotting all the levels as a player.

Block Out! gives you a time limit instead. It is around 2 minutes per level, which is about the average for the core game loop of a hybrid-casual game. In those 2 minutes, you can fumble around as much as you want, and there is a constant pressure that keeps you on your toes. This prevents the one-shotting aspect, randomised by the players’ skill at the current time - the ideal solution to controlling difficulty levels.

Going over a specific example, say a level takes a minimum of 25 moves to pass successfully. This means the number of moves per player is going to converge around this number. For a time based one, average number of attempts to pass a level will depend on the player’s skill on the day, their experience, their mood and focus.

This graph is the best visualisation I came up with to demonstrate this. For attempts-based fail states, the curve is very skewed to the min. # of moves of the level. Variance from time-based fail states moves the curve upward. This matters because that gap between min. moves and what players have is where the revenue is generated. Players spend to pass the level, and the closer they are about to pass a level, the more likely they would pay.

Departing from a proven formula this way is very difficult, mainly because all the other areas of the game must still feel coherent while giving the players something familiar to latch on to. Here, the developers Grand Games did something smart, and executed it perfectly.

Cookie Cutter Hybrid Casual

Success in the hybrid casual as a genre is dependent on optimisation in every sense of the word. Optimising acquisition, retention, LTV and even game development and UI design. That is why you see Habby reuse their same progression methods, menu arrangements and rough art style consistent across multiple games they have like survivor.io and CapybaraGo.

Block Out! took this one step further, and got the best examples of the puzzle genre in general. The following are certain ingredients you might consider when designing your game, proven to work; and Block Out! has all of them:

• The level-based progression and X attempts that refresh over time (Candy Crush)
• The “boosters” to help you that you can activate (Royal Kingdom)
• If you fail a level, continue with soft currency. (Chrome Valley Customs)
• Selling boosters and soft currency with correct pricing thresholds
• Progression rewards at certain level thresholds (Journey) (Royal Match)
• Social elements like competitions and leaderboards (Monopoly Go)
• … and the good old UI wireframe: menu at the bottom, top-left profile, resources as header, etc.

Some of these are pure math and numbers that were perfected by other games; for example a failed attempt costing you 900 coins. Some of them have unintended benefits because of their game design; I am sure a time-pressured player is less likely to think of using their boosters vs. someone who is moves-limited.

However, the tough part in this is actually making all of these familiar without crossing the copycat line. Block Out! balances this pretty flawlessly and clears one of the biggest early retention hurdles easily through familiar-but-distinct-enough design: through the art style, progression pacing, and careful optimisation of all the intertwined systems.

Look out, Block Out!

We have praised the game in how it differentiates itself for a very fun hook, while keeping it familiar for massive growth; but there are some potential risks that the aforementioned design choices make. Here are a couple of the most important ones in my view, and how to be on the look out for them with data.

• Player burnout. The time-pressure is a very different type of failure, and is inherently more taxing on the player. This means that players are spending more effort per level, and truly failing a level after putting in a ton of effort will trigger churn for more players. If the player retention curve is well on early days, but crashes after Day 14 or after hard levels, the developers should consider making things easier. A/B testing the time cap on certain levels is one, relatively simple way to remedy this one level at a time.
• ROI decrease as the game matures. As we mentioned, the puzzle market is very saturated, with strong competition, and the novelty effect of the design will eventually run out. As we also know, the acquisition costs grow over time even if you are adding new content regularly. This means the profit margin is going to shrink over time, faster than normal with the compounding effects. Keeping a close eye on CPA and ROAS over cohorts is of critical importance.

Conclusion

Block Out! deserves to be the hit that it is. It has a core change to the well-proven genre and the execution of a top-class hybrid casual studio. The design choices they make do come with their risks, but nothing that can’t be solved with a good strategy and careful data & measurement.

Note: if you liked this and would like a similar breakdown for your game, drop me a message through here (website form) or on Bluesky/Threads!