Deadbeat Club – BLOCKSUM

Deadbeat Club is a column about good video games you can get cheaply, primarily free ones.

At first, I wanted to call BLOCKSUM a ripoff of Tetris, but I realized that wasn't very accurate. Then I thought it was more like Tetris Attack, which was more accurate, but still wrong. Then I realized that BLOCKSUM is a rare kind of puzzle game, the kind that isn't a rip-off of Tetris, Tetris Attack or Bejeweled.

BLOCKSUM involves minor math skills, so if you're one of those people who can't do addition quickly, you should probably give it a pass. It's kind of hard to explain the gameplay, so I'm going to do it through specific examples.


To remove bricks, you have to have more than or equal to x number of bricks with the number x on them. In this screenshot, the blocks are disappearing because there are 3 blocks with the number 3 touching. They would still disappear if there were 12 blocks with the number 3 touching. When the minimum number of blocks are touching, the blocks will start disappearing, but you do have a little bit of time to add more to the chain for more points.



You create new blocks by combining adjacent ones to add up their numbers. You can do this as many times as you want, but it cannot be undone. The blocks cannot, be moved, so you have to keep in mind that all of your newly formed blocks will need to be touching to disappear. Sometimes you'll make a mistake, like in the screenshot above; that's where the little silver balls come in. Combine the ball with a block and all blocks of that number will just disappear from the screen. This makes the game still completable when you do something like accidentally create a 28 numbered block.

You can still connect larger numbers though.

As the game goes on, the blocks slowly rise, and when they hit the top, the game over countdown begins. If you can get them to not touch the ceiling before the countdown ends, you're still in the game. The blocks get faster and higher numbered as the game goes on, making it get really tricky at later stages.

The game isn't as complicated as it sounds and is easy to pick up, but it gets tough once you're dealing with larger numbered blocks. It is a lot of fun to play for a while and I got quite addicted to it for a few days. My only real complaint is that the game starts off slow, if you want to get back to the faster, tougher sections you have to work your way there all over again. So while BLOCKSUM doesn't have the lasting power of some other puzzle games, it is still fun to play and worth the price of free.

Download link here.