For some reason this game massively appeals to the smooth part of my brain. It’s one of those game that takes way less skill than Tetris that we’ve all seen free ads for. Somehow Apple Arcade snatched it so there are no ads or microtransactions, which means I’m all in. If you want a brainless game that makes you feel like you’re at a slot machine in the smoke filled bowels of Las Vegas at three am, this is the game for you. All the slot machine dopamine jingles and obnoxious bells and some guy screaming amazing at you for making the most mediocre move. Want to revive when you mess up? Sure, sometimes you get it sometimes you don’t. There is no way to tell how to trigger it. Why do I get an amazing vs good, how does the point valuation stack up? No one knows that either. He’s just quiet if you mess up, and even if you fail on the first move it tells you ‘so close’ which is crazy. Who needs brain wrinkles? Not me.

Was really excited for this game but it falls flat in many ways, especially adventure mode. I prefer adventure mode over endless but it seems pointless? Like there’s no trophy section to show past adventures you’ve completed or any kind of reward for completing. On top of that, there are many levels that are clearly meant to be a grind in the version with ads because they’re nearly impossible to complete and feel intentionally so. I shouldn’t have to play hundreds of times on one level to just progress, especially since there’s no items or anything to help you if you get stuck. You can even tell when you’re about to lose a level because the blocks they give you are impossible to place aside from one. Also, I feel many levels where you have to collect gems just take too long. It’s exhausting playing so long (usually to failure) when you’re only collection one gem per cleared line and you need to collect 60+ per color to complete the level. Please add an undo button or at least lessen the difficulty of adventure mode because that’s ridiculous, especially if you don’t have time to waste grinding out a level for an image you’ll never see again.

I’ve loved Block Black for probably a year and now that there is an Apple Arcade version, I can finally play ad-free! My only complaint is that there are no themes. You should add a toggle to turn on and off the regular themes that change as you play and add back the button in the regular Block Blast that lets you add a custom theme from an image. You should also add back the “other games” option on the home screen that let you play other games. If you read this, please add these as it would make everyone happy. Otherwise, love the game!

It took me a few days to confirm the pattern, but the game appears to force you to lose if you win too many times in a day, usually once you reach one of the “Hard” levels.After you reach an apparent win cap, the game starts forcing losses. You can try the same level all day and it will find a way to make you lose, sometimes within the first or second move. But come back the next day and suddenly you’ll win easily, sometimes on the first try.This has happened to me four days in a row now: win a certain number of times, reach a Hard level, get completely stuck no matter what I do, then play again the next day and beat it immediately.It’s not really that bad in my case because I’m playing through Apple Arcade, so I’m not paying for lives or anything else. But that almost makes the mechanic more pointless. You’re wasting time playing a game you think you have a chance of winning instead of the game simply telling you that you’ve won enough for the day.Probably one of my least favorite things about Apple Arcade is that they port over games built around these kinds of manipulative mechanics without necessarily removing the mechanics themselves. They remove the part where you spend money, but leave in the part that was seemingly designed to frustrate you into spending money in the first place.If anything, playing these games without the microtransactions makes it much more obvious what some of those mechanics were originally designed to do.