Back to Dreamlist

Blockout (1989)

by California Dreams, Logical Design Works, Rainbow Arts, Tec Toy, Technos Japan

Genres:Puzzle, Arcade

Themes:Action

Game modes:Single player, Multiplayer

Story:Blockout is a puzzle videogame, created in 1989 by Polish developer - California Dreams, designed by Aleksander Ustaszewski and Mirosław Zabłocki. The game is the logical extension of Tetris into the third dimension. In Tetris, the player manipulates a set of tetrominoes which fall into a two-dimensional pit (seen from the side). The aim is to solve a real-time packing problem by forming complete rows, which then disappear and score points. Poor play leads to incomplete rows, caused by inefficient arrangements of tiles; these rows do not disappear, giving the player progressively less space and less time to play subsequent pieces. Similarly, in Blockout, the player manipulates a set of polycubes which fall into a three-dimensional pit (seen from above; the pieces appear in the foreground and fall away). The pieces can be rotated around all three axes, and moved horizontally and vertically. The aim is to form complete layers.Show more

Added by @erbello

Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.

66

Trailers and screenshots

Stories about this game (0)

No stories yet! Be the first to share your memories with Blockout and inspire others.

Resident Evil Outbreak

Resident Evil OutbreakResident Evil Outbreak is a survival-horror game released exclusively for the PlayStation 2. The gameplay is similar to the previous Resident Evil games and consists mainly of exploring, solving puzzles, finding items and surviving. It was the first Resident Evil game with multiplayer capability, using the PlayStation 2's online network. Up to four players could participate simultaneously in one scenario. Alternately, in single-player mode, the player is accompanied by two AI-controlled characters.

Rule of RoseRule of Rose is a survival horror game in which the player, who controls Jennifer, explores the game environments and furthers the plot by accomplishing tasks and experiencing cut-scenes while sporadically encountering enemies and bosses. Taking place in England in 1930, Rule of Rose centers on Jennifer, a young woman who is led to an abandoned orphanage by a small boy.

TresspasserTrespasser is an action-adventure first-person-shooter video game released in 1998 that was billed as a "digital sequel" to the 1997 film "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". The player assumes the role of Anne, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World. With only a single arm and limited weapons, Anne must escape the remote island by solving puzzles and evading the dangerous dinosaurs. The game is noted for the involvement of the film's director, Steven Spielberg, and actors Richard Attenborough and Minnie Driver. Trespasser's game engine was also very advanced for its time, showcasing large outdoor environments, real object physics, an advanced AI system, destructible objects, an advanced LOD (Level-of-Detail) system, and the first ever use of ragdoll physics and inverse kinematics for dynamically generated animations. The gameplay is very atmospheric with no visual HUD of any kind except for a heart-shaped tattoo on Anne's left breast to represent her health points and speaking out loud how much ammo is in each weapon. Tresspasser was one of the most highly anticipated games of the 1990's. Unfortunately, problems arose as soon as development started. The development team was newly formed with inexperienced management and artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling. After a very welcoming and positive reception from early demos and concept art from E3 1996 and PCGamer, the team got overconfident about their skills and started putting in one of the worst forms of Feature Creep imaginable. The game was being delayed and going overbudget as new and never-before-seen experimental features were added or changed with an immobile release date set into the Fall of 1998. While the game was originally conceived as a Survival Horror title, it was turned into an Action-Adventure as the dinosaurs were incapable of doing advanced AI tactics or going near structures without getting stuck on building geometry. The dinosaur models themselves would cause severe slowdown for the PC due to the attached physics boxes to every raptor, along with the blood particle effects. (Recommended specs for Tresspasser at the time called for a 166 MHz Pentium II.) The models would constantly warp, twist, and compress in broken ways due to the animations and physics boxes attached them, making almost every creature stumble around in an incredibly drunken manner. The AI also had an advanced mood and emotion system for each of the dinosaurs where they could potentially hunt Anne or other dinosaurs depending on their mood. It was the earliest time a 3D game tried to create a living world using AI and emergent gameplay. Due to a bug where the AI switched so quickly in the extremes, it caused the dinosaurs to stop moving or responding altogether. A hard-coded fix was put in place where the aggression and hunger levels were set to maximum while all other moods and emotions were set to zero, turning almost all the creatures into mindless hunters. Due to an oversight, only very few raptors in the game (mostly in the Industrial Jungle level) had this emotion system still turned on. The raptors would go up to Anne to follow and sniff her curiously, until they were injured in some way. Tresspasser also conceived a "very immersive" arm system where players could interact with the world through their mouse and keyboard to inspect and look at objects close up. Anne only has a right arm to interact with the world that's capable of being manually turned in 360 degree movements that are impossible to do in real life. While it can pick up and hold objects, Anne be constantly dropping objects she's holding in her hand when bumping into structures, invisible boundaries, and dinosaurs. A left arm was scraped due to time and technical issues. Other similarly weird visual bugs, severe slowdowns, and crashes are a constant feature. Tresspasser had to be pushed out in a very unfinished and unpolished state with a lot of features, content, and several levels cut\merged. Some of which are still found within the game's files. It ultimately received mixed to negative reviews at the time and disappointed many reviewers, with some declaring Tresspasser as "the worst game of 1998". It ultimately sold somewhat over 50,000 copies with the CD-ROM being very rare today. Even with the negative reception, Tresspasser still has an active cult following to this day with various fixes, mods, and several potential remakes on modern engines. The game was the main inspiration of Valve's Half-Life series and many of Tresspasser's other ideas would later realized in other future games.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Grand Theft Auto: Vice CityIn the year 1986, Tommy Vercetti is heavily indebted to his mafia superiors after a drug deal gone awry, but his dreams of taking over Vice City (based on Miami) push him down a different path. Featuring a wide variety of vehicles and weapons, radio stations playing hit songs from the era and an intense atmosphere, GTA: Vice City is an open-world sandbox satire of '80's Miami.

Silent Hill 3Silent Hill 3 is the third installment in the Silent Hill series. Like the previous entries, Silent Hill 3 is a survival horror combining action-based combat and puzzle-solving, but is somewhat more combat-oriented than the preceding installments. The main character is able to side-step and block some attacks, but in general shares with the other protagonists of the series their relative ineptitude in combat.

Science fiction

Science fiction

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Resident Evil 3: NemesisResident Evil 3: Nemesis is a survival horror video game and the third installment in the Resident Evil series. Like its two predecessors, it is a third-person action-adventure game with polygonal characters on pre-rendered backgrounds with cinematic camera angles. Although the game uses the same basic engine and gameplay as the previous games, the gameplay is improved by features such as auto-targeting, a 180 degree spin, and a new dodge move that allows Jill to avoid enemy attacks. The PC and Dreamcast versions includes all eight of Jill's possible costumes, as well as the mercenary mini-game Operation Mad Jackal which allows you to play as one of the three Umbrella soldiers. On the Playstation version, these special features must be unlocked by beating the game with a high score.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration - Digital Expanded Edition

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration - Digital Expanded EditionAtari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Digital Expanded Edition gives you access to the full Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration game plus DLC 1: The Wider World of Atari and DLC 2: The First Console War.

Tetris Effect: Connected

Tetris Effect: ConnectedTETRIS® EFFECT: CONNECTED adds an all-new robust multiplayer expansion to the huge variety of addictive and innovative single-player modes that Tetris Effect is known for. Connect and play with or against each other in all-new modes like “Zone Battle,” which shakes up traditional 1-on-1 Tetris gameplay via the time-stopping Zone mechanic, or try the innovative co-op of “Connected” mode, where up to three players can literally connect their Tetris playfields together and play as one, as they work together to take down a series of increasingly-challenging CPU-controlled bosses.

Silent Hill 2 (Classic)

Silent Hill 2 (Classic)The second entry in the Silent Hill franchise, Silent Hill 2 is a narrative-focused third-person psychological survival horror game with emphasis on combat, exploration and puzzle-solving elements which follows James Sunderland, a man who receives a letter, seemingly sent by his three-years-deceased wife Mary, in which he is beckoned to the fog-ridden town of Silent Hill at the same time as numerous other people troubled by their past.

Silent HillSilent Hill is the first installment in the Silent Hill series of psychological survival horror video games. Unlike earlier survival horror games that focused on protagonists with combat training, the main character Harry Mason is an average man. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving. The controller vibration is used to indicate Harry's heartbeat and will vibrate on low health. The player must regularly enter an inventory screen to check Harry's health, use items, and equip different weapons.