Blocks by Anubhav Kashyap
Hey guys! I am Anubhav Kashyap, a 14 year old game developer, and I made this game for Ludum Dare 42. Due to schoolwork, I had only 5 hours left when I joined the event. I chalked out an idea and got to work on it. And voila, here is the end product!

The goal is simple: try to survive as long as you can while you slowly run out of space! How long can you survive?
Note: All the code, art and audio has been made by me during the jam.
| HTML5 (web) | https://anubhav-kashyap.itch.io/blocks |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/blocks |
Ratings
| Overall | 775th | 3.22⭐ | 188🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 567th | 3.259⭐ | 187🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1002th | 2.754⭐ | 187🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 647th | 3.436⭐ | 189🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 919th | 2.943⭐ | 187🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 474th | 3.116⭐ | 174🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 49🗨️ |
1) The jumping doesn't work when the cube you control is next to another block. Is that intentional, or a bug?
2) I would slow down the speed of the falling blocks just a little bit.
Still, great job, and good luck!
Good job though, and an interesting concept! I enjoyed it!
I could be imagining it, but I think the blocks are falling faster in fullscreen mode.
Also, are you just rolling a random number to determine which column the next block falls in? I played a couple rounds where at one point, I stopped pressing buttons and stayed still, and lasted an additional
fifteen-twenty+ seconds because all the blocks were falling in the other columns. If that is not intended, a good improvement would be to time how many seconds it's been since the keyboard press event, and drop a block on the player's column when it reaches X number of seconds.
I think rather than slowing down the cubes, maybe you could introduce a visual cue that lets the palyer know a cube is about to drop on a specific column, like some kind of highlight in a lighter red projected on the wall, or maybe flashing the cubes that are already on that column.
Hey, good job, keep learning! :)
You might wanna check out the colisions too

In a runner-style short survival game that is controlled exclusively with a keyboard, it is very wrong to have to click *twice* and *with your mouse* on *buttons that have no feedback* to restart. Also, both buttons are literally the only clickable thing on the screen, so it could as well at least be "click anywhere to continue". Returning to the starting screen is so unnecessary. I know it was probably a bit simpler to restart the whole game including the title screen, but it makes it so much more annoying to restart.
It is very little detail, but these details can add up in bigger games and can spoil the experience although the core game can be perfect.
Making it in 3d is just unnecessary for this concept imo.
I would like to know if you've done the audio yourself, in which case it would be incredible.
Good entry !
- to preserve the aesthetic angle while giving clear depth to falling blocks, you could have the row of the falling block slightly turn a different color. The player can then compare the path of the block to their own instead of hoping they guessed correctly in which rows the blocks are falling.
- upon landing, reset the velocity to (0,0,0) to get rid of sliding rigidbodies. My character was slowly sliding among the x-axis even though I wasn't pressing any buttons.
- fix the jump. It's not all that reliable for the player but necessary to overcome some obstacles.
Congrats, for a game in 5hours really good job :)
The theme is quite respected. it's kinda hard at the beggining but you get used to it fast !
this is typically the kind of game i could play on my phone !
Good luck for the next!
The music goes really well and gives it a sense of urgency to do well.
Artwork is simple and fits the overall look/feel of the game in its entirety.
- Collision - sometimes you can be stuck not being able to jump with nothing above you
- That jump is really floaty which makes the game feel less solid.
That's it I guess. Music is competent but short looped which gets repetitive, game doesn't have too much more to it than just this core.
I like that the high score remains even if you close the page and open it again. That's almost creepy.
Your game is a great example of how to find fun gameplay efficiently. While I probably put more effort into my game and made it much more complex than yours, I'd say your game is a great deal more fun. If you'd like to prove me wrong (or right!), please do! It's called Feedrun. Thanks!
Because the camera is at an angle (which looks cool btw), it can be difficult to determine where the blocks are landing at times.
When jumping I seem to linger up in the air a bit too much.
You seem to have a knack for this. For the next LD, you may want to forget about schoolwork - would be interested to see what you can make in 48/72hrs... Joking school is important lol.
Still really liked it.
Despite being very simplistic, the graphics are easy on the eye and one might say that not much more in terms of visuals is really needed for a game such as this.
The controls deserve a rating of "good enough" but will probably require more work to be more precise, in case you decide to work on this game further.
Music is definitely the strongest part: it creates the beat, to which one just wants to keep playing.
All in all, well done! Looking forward for more awesome games from you.
I would have liked the shadows to cast straight down onto the blocks. The wall was a help, but the angle made it hard to see what was going on sometimes.
I didn't like how high you jumped up. It felt perilous making every jump! I would make the jump more controlled with less vertical height - maybe add a double jump if needed (I noticed at one point I needed all that height to jump from the right to the left side after a stream of centre blocks).
Nice one!
This achieves very nicely what it set out to do, given your time frame it's quite a big feat ! Congratulations
all that said its pretty incredible for 5hr
Feel free to try out my game if you want.
Aside from what most of people pointed out until now, I noticed it was much easier playing the game if I stayed in the right corner, watching out the shadow of the boxes that were to fall, dodged them, and then went back to that corner. I know a game depends of what you make of it, so I quickly abandonned that technique, as it is much funnier to stay in the middle ;)
Anyways, you did an amazing job in so little time, and I enjoyed it ^^
Excellent game (especially for 5 hours)! However, I'm still going to give pointers as if it were made in the full 48. Here's how I broke down the score:
FUN: It was definitely fun! Some elements of the graphics made the gameplay a bit more (unnecessarily) difficult, and I'll detail that below, but overall it feels action-packed and a joy to play. I did have a bug where I fell onto the top of a block and it killed me.
The jumping felt a little floaty and inconsistent (reminding me of your previous jam effort). It might be about time to start rewriting that jump code :wink:
For a post-jam version a few gameplay variations would be nice so it isn't just the same blocks over and over again. Some blocks explode when you touch them, clearing out other blocks, etc. 3/5, a solid effort!
INNOVATION: I don't think there's a whole lot here mechanically (again, 5 hours), so this category gets 1.5/5.
THEME: I don't think the theme allowed for much interpretation. However, I gave this category a 3/5 since you weren't representing it as physical objects (crates, packages, etc) but as a simple abstract.
GRAPHICS: The graphics are stellar! A couple things caught my attention: Having the light source more parallel to the wall would have helped the player 'see' where the blocks are coming down, instead of having it at an angle like it is. I also think for such a minimalist game, the shadow quality could have been increased. Overall though they were great, 4.5/5!
AUDIO: The audio was a bit repetitive, though it definitely helped the action-packed feel of the game. I gave it a 2/5.
OVERALL: I gave the game a 3.5/5, mostly due to the INNOVATION and AUDIO categories. I think that with development this could make an excellent mobile title and could bring you quite a bit of success!
Good job, it's quite a lot to do in 5 hours!