''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 with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objec ...

in which players build and play using

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

-like building blocks in

singleplayer A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the gameplay. Video games in general can feature several game modes, including single-player modes designed to be played by a single player in addi ...

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 ...

modes. It was created by American developer Eric "Badspot" Hartman, using the Torque Game Engine, and was originally released as

freeware Freeware is software, 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 free ...

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

brand, but 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. The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV (later known as TechTV) on May 11, 1998. ''The Screen Savers'' originally centered on computers, new techn ...

on February 11, 2005, drastically increasing the user base overnight. It has also been featured on Shack News. ''Blockland'' was officially released on February 24, 2007.Blockland Forum – It's Here
February 2007 It was released on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

in December 2013 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, often simply referred to as a Lego figure or a minifig, is a small plastic articulated figurine made of special Lego bricks produced by Danish building toy manufacturer The Lego Group. They were first produced in 1978 and ha ...

, players build inside of the

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space or spaces) is a Computer simulation, computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many simultaneous users who can create a personal Avatar (computing), avatar and independently explore th ...

using bricks reminiscent of toy blocks. These structures can be built in either a

single-player A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the gameplay. Video games in general can feature several game modes, including single-player modes designed to be played by a single player in add ...

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. ''Blockland'' features non-player characters, 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 to full games-within-a-game, such as

role-playing video game Role-playing video games, also known as CRPG (computer/console role-playing games), comprise a broad video game genre generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement (often through increasing characters' levels or other skills) ...

, or zombie survival. ''Blockland'' 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 video, pinball, electro-mechanical, redemption, etc., game ** Arcade video game, a coin-operated video game ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade video game's hardware ** Arcad ...

games such as ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but B ...

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

Development

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 Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

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. A new version was released in August 2012, removing terrain but adding more dynamic lighting to builds. The game was greenlit on Steam Greenlight in August 2013, and on December 16, ''Blockland'' was released on

after spending nearly a year on Steam Greenlight.

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 pipe ...

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.

References

External links

* {{Torque Game Engine games 2004 video games 2007 video games Indie games Multiplayer and single-player video games MacOS games Sandbox games Torque (game engine) games Video games developed in the United States Windows games