Deblock makes it dangerously easy to squeeze in another twenty seconds
I keep finding incremental games I can’t put down, and Deblock got me again. A round starts with a little platform full of blocks and about twenty seconds to smash as many as I can. I hover over a block, my pickaxe swings, and whatever I break pays for an upgrade. The first few rounds are over before I’ve done much damage. A few purchases later, I’m already eyeing the pile I couldn’t get through last time.
I started by making the pickaxe swing faster and hit harder. A few extra seconds on the clock helped, too. Then I could make blocks spawn faster, bring TNT into the mix, or get a temporary boost that made my tools hit harder. Eventually I had multiple pickaxes swinging away and could swap in a hammer or a jackhammer. I got a similar kick out of watching coins fly across the screen in The Big Suck. Here, my favorite thing is hitting a TNT block and watching money and materials spray toward the edges of the screen. It still feels good hundreds of rounds in.
Prestige is what kept me playing long after I’d seen how ridiculous a round could get. Once I earned enough money, I could reset my progress and spend the rewards on permanent upgrades like more pickaxes, extra time, or more cash per block. Giving up a setup that could tear through the platform in seconds sounded like a bad deal right up until I saw how quickly I could build it back. Each reset got me to the next one a little faster. There are charms to unlock and equip along the way, too, which give you another way to make short work of the platform.
The block platform has a clean retro look, and I love how much care went into the skill tree animations. I spent a lot of time bouncing between that screen and the next round, and even buying an upgrade felt satisfying. The bigger payoff was seeing what it did as soon as I got back to swinging.
Deblock has no native controller support, but it worked surprisingly well on my ROG Xbox Ally X. In Desktop mode, the right stick moves the mouse cursor. Since all I had to do during a run was hover over blocks, I didn’t miss having a mouse. Performance started at a steady 120 fps and dipped into the 90s once the pickaxes and explosions got out of hand. It still felt smooth.
If breaking the same blocks over and over sounds boring, Prestige mostly gives you a reason to do it all again. For me, the rounds are short enough that I always want to see what the next upgrade does, and the payoff is right there in the next pile of rubble. I kept thinking I’d stop after one more run. Turns out twenty seconds is very easy to talk yourself into. Thanks for reading!
