Block Shop - ★★★★☆
The problem I find with a lot of puzzle games - and do I mean a lot - is that, while the developer’s intelligence shines through, I myself never feel particularly smart for completing the puzzles. That can be for a myriad of reasons: perhaps the puzzles are just too easy, perhaps once you “get” the premise, there’s not much room for the game to challenge you further, but often it’s because I find the best solution is to brute force answers without needing to apply all that much logic.
There’s also the opposite subset of games, where players feel smart for completing them, but the developer hasn’t done anything particularly special - think something formulaic that’s been tried and tested, like a well-executed nonogram or sudoku adaptation. They’re nice enough, but are never going to blow anyone away with their gameplay.
The sweet spot for me, then – what makes for an excellent puzzle game – is one that does both: something that gives me plenty of personal “Eureka!” moments, but also impresses with its concept and level design. Block Shop, from FoolBox Studios, definitely falls into that category.
Image: Foolbox Studios/ IndieLoupe
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Developer: Foolbox Studios
Publisher: Foolbox Studios
Release: 17 February 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 9,75€/$9.99/£8.50
Playtime upon Review: 8.8 hours
In Block Shop, each puzzle has the player take various machines and conveyor belts to transform the level’s input blocks to those displayed in the output. I’ve seen a somewhat lazy comparison elsewhere between Block Shop and Tobias Springer’s shapez (previously shapez.io) – the similarities are really only skin-deep. Admittedly, the number of minimalistic games about manipulating shapes to make other, more complex, shapes is rather limited, but in terms of gameplay they’re very distinct. I know there’s a puzzle DLC for shapez, which is a lot more in the ballpark of Block Shop, but to compare those is a disservice to the latter: Block Shop is built from the ground up with the puzzles in mind.
I should mention: this game is hard. Not aggravatingly-so, but I think you could look at the concept and assume that there wouldn't be a huge amount of room for depth when it comes to difficulty. I would argue that the level of challenge is perhaps Block Shop’s biggest strength, both in each individual chapter and across the game as a whole. Every new machine – which you typically get at the start of a new chapter – is introduced with a basic puzzle or two to ease it into your repertoire. Before you know it, you’re integrating it into a complex solution with the rest of your machines, muddling your way through to the solution. The game’s responsiveness (cleanly updating in real-time as you add and remove machines) encourages players to experiment: it’s very easy to throw something down to test what happens, and to apply tweaks to your factory without it feeling cumbersome or like you’re damaging any progress you might have made.
When players are really stuck there’s a hint system, which usually provides just enough information to help guide you to a solution, by telling you where to place a handful of machines. For the most part it’s excellently implemented – I’m sure there are puzzles that might have got frustrating without it, but it never feels like the solution has been handed to you: there’s still a sense of accomplishment upon completing a level, even when you’ve used every hint available.
My sole hang-up with Block Shop does come from this system, however: I had all the hints unlocked on my final incomplete puzzle and had come back to it on a few occasions, still unable to quite figure out how to solve it. I’d put down the machines the hints told me to, repeatedly get to what felt like ninety percent of the solution, but not quite have room to fit the final machine I needed to make it work. The hints were, for all intents and purposes, locked in their places – I didn’t consider trying any solution without them, even though one machine in particular seemed to be in the way of everything else I was trying to accomplish. Eventually I uprooted it, ignoring the hint entirely, and found a way to make it work within a couple of minutes. I’m sure there was a solution somewhere that used the hint, but, in that one instance, it was probably hindering me far more than it helped.
Given the game’s 81 levels (or 108, including the even-harder bonus levels), I think it would be almost impossible to avoid one or two cases like this without an unrealistic amount of playtesting and QC, but for my final level of the main game to be completed with a sense of frustration rather than accomplishment did take the shine off ever-so-slightly. It’s difficult to complain too much, though, considering that the hints used in other levels almost certainly saved cumulative hours of head-scratching and hair-pulling. It’s a key part of ensuring the aforementioned difficulty curve lands in just the right place on a player-by-player basis.
Block Shop is a wonderful and challenging little puzzler, and an excellent, polished, debut from Foolbox Studios. It is awarded ★★★★☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided by the developer.
