''Blockland'' is a

sandbox game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may ...

in which players build and play using

Lego Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking ...

-like building blocks in

singleplayer A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. A single-player game is usually a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" is usuall ...

and

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

. It was created by American developer Eric "Badspot" Hartman, using the

Torque Game Engine Torque Game Engine, or TGE, is an open-source cross-platform 3D computer game engine, developed by GarageGames and actively maintained under the current versions Torque 3D as well as Torque 2D. It was originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 ...

, and was originally released as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

on November 15, 2004. The game is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, the

brand. However, at one point, Lego was in talks with Hartman about purchasing the game. ''Blockland'' was spotlighted on

The Screen Savers ''The Screen Savers'' is an American TV show that aired on TechTV from 1998 to 2005.Fost, Dan (17 May 1999)A Day in the Life of ZDTV's `The Screen Savers' ''San Francisco Chronicle'' The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV (later k ...

on February 11, 2005, drastically increasing the user base overnight. It has also been featured on

Shack News ''Shacknews'' (originally Quakeholio, then ShugaShack) is a website that hosts news, features, editorial content and forums relating to computer games and console games. It is currently owned by a company called Gamerhub Content Network. Gamerh ...

. ''Blockland'' was officially released on February 24, 2007.Blockland Forum – It's Here
February 2007 On December 16, 2013, ''Blockland'' was released on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

after spending nearly a year on Steam Greenlight.

Gameplay

''Blockland'' is an open-ended

, giving players the freedom to design and construct elaborate structures. Styled as a

minifigure A Lego minifigure, commonly referred to as a minifig, is a small plastic articulated figurine produced by Danish toy manufacturer The Lego Group. They were first produced in 1978 and have been a success, with over 4 billion produced worldwide a ...

, players build inside of the

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

using bricks reminiscent of

toy blocks Toy blocks (also building bricks, building blocks, or simply blocks) are wooden, plastic, or foam pieces of various shapes (cube, cylinder, arch etc.) and colors that are used as construction toys. Sometimes, toy blocks depict letters of the alph ...

. These structures can be built in either a

server. Any player who buys the game is able to host a standard server, holding up to 100 players. The properties of individual bricks can be changed, such as illumination, particles, and

specularity Specularity is the visual appearance of specular reflections. In computer graphics In computer graphics, it means the quantity used in three-dimensional (3D) rendering which represents the amount of reflectivity a surface has. It is a key com ...

. ''Blockland'' also features NPCs, weapons, destructible vehicles, and a

minigame A minigame (also spelled mini game and mini-game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short game often contained within another video game. A minigame contains different gameplay elements, and is often smaller or more simplistic, than th ...

system, enabling users to create new self-contained gameplay modes. These can range from

deathmatch Deathmatch, also known as free-for-all, is a gameplay mode integrated into many shooter games, including first-person shooter (FPS), and real-time strategy (RTS) video games, where the goal is to kill (or "frag") the other players' characters a ...

to full games-within-a-game, such as

RPGs RPG may refer to: Military * Rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon **''Ruchnoi Protivotankoviy Granatomyot'' (Russian: ''Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт''), hand-held anti-tank grenade launc ...

, or zombie survival. ''Blockland'' also features a trigger and event-based system to create basic interactive objects, such as operable light switches, missile launchers, collapsing structures, or

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

games such as ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcor ...

'' or Breakout. ''Blockland'' has a large community of player-created add-on content, such as gamemodes, vehicles, and specialty bricks.

Shadows and Shaders

Included in the game on August 9, 2012, an update called "Shadows and Shaders" (also known as Version 21) removed the game's traditional 'maps' - open-world terrain - replacing them with a flat field.

GLSL OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is a high-level shading language with a syntax based on the C programming language. It was created by the OpenGL ARB (OpenGL Architecture Review Board) to give developers more direct control of the graphics pipelin ...

shadows and shaders were added, along with customizable skyboxes, and a day/night cycle. Additionally, it provided users with the ability to make custom shader files.

History

A prototype version of Blockland known as 'Vanilla Blockland' was released on November 15, 2004. Canadian newspaper

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

wrote an article on this early version of ''Blockland'', in which creator Eric "Badspot" Hartman claimed the game had gained 20,000 users in the ten days since it "became big", after being featured on ''The Screen Savers''. The retail version of Blockland was completed and released on February 24, 2007. On August 8, 2012, a new version was released, removing terrain but adding more dynamic lighting to builds. The game was greenlit on Steam Greenlight on August 28, 2013. On December 16, 2013, Blockland was released on

after spending nearly a year on Steam Greenlight.

Modifications

Blockland features an add-on system to aid users in creating custom content, such as weapons, vehicles, effects, and gamemodes. Add-ons can range from new items to

total overhaul Video game modding (short for "modification") is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general modding. Mods may range from small changes an ...

modifications. While Blockland is not open source, all of the default vehicles and weapons in the game use the add-on system, so players can examine working examples to help them learn how to modify the game. Most player-created servers are usually reliant on custom content.

References

External links