Mario may have been content to smash bricks with his thick skull and be on his merry way, but not the little robot in Blocks That Matter. Nosiree, that little bugger isn’t a fan of wasting all of that precious material, and his innovative ability to collect blocks and assemble them into useful structures is what makes Blocks That Matter so wildly enjoyable.
The feisty little robot, which looks eerily like a washing machine with stick-figure limbs, is on a mission to rescue its kidnapped creators. Although he’s about as threatening as C-3P0 in a mini-skirt, this puzzle-platformer doesn’t revolve as much around killing enemies as it does outwitting them and using the world around him to survive. The robot is able to collect certain types of materials by bashing them from beneath, or by grinding them up with his drill if it is directly in front of him. Collect four blocks and you can pause the game and assemble them into a structure to allow you to reach a new area in the level. It’a such a simple mechanic, but it’s an ingenious one, and the novelty doesn’t wear off through the game’s increasingly challenging levels.
