In the landscape of puzzle games, most are aimed towards being brain teasers rather than anything educational. Which is where Block Buster Billy somewhat stands out compared to its contemporaries in the Sokoban style of puzzle titles.
But does this design all add up to a good game, or does it end up all being divided? Check out more of our review down below.
Block Buster Billy
Developer: Bigosaur
Publisher: Bigosaur
Platforms: PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: August 28, 2023
Players: 1
Price: $9.99
In true Sokoban fashion, Block Buster Billy’s graphical are simple. Owing mainly in fact for it targeting a 2D grid for the character and pieces to move around in each stage.
The pixel art is solid. There’s nothing about it that looks ugly or unfinished, yet at the same time there’s nothing remarkable about it either. In a sea of retro-style games that follow a 8/16-bit pixel art style, this game would land solely right in the center in terms of quality.
The same goes for the rest of its presentation. It’s soundtrack is a mix of slow paced beats to relax the player while also not being distracting as they attempt to solve the various puzzles. It would feel right at home as one of the beats a college student may put on while studying.
Overall, everything about Block Buster Billy is simple. Where this fact is best reflected by its story that only barely explains the reasoning for why the character is doing what they’re doing. Considering most of the time spent in game, it’s also rather unnecessary and could’ve easily been removed without a single person noticing.
All that I’ve explained above would generally lead one to conclude this game to be specifically targeted towards children. It’s safe for them and does have some concepts those in the younger audience may learn from.
Yet once you get to the puzzles, you’ll find that most children would struggle to solve even some of the tamer puzzles. While I wouldn’t say they’re obtuse in any way to solve, some of the challenges involve the more experienced minds of the Sokoban genre.
While it may be difficult to describe the challenge behind a puzzle, as how hard one may solve could boil down to whether one has an idea for its solution. I can tell a lot of attention went into the details on solving each puzzle.
Some answers might seem obvious, only for one to go through with it and realization the developer put a subtlety important block rendering the idea useless. It can be a bit disheartening to think you’ve come up with the answer to a difficult puzzle, only to learn the developer also saw this path and thwarted your efforts.
But this makes it all the more satisfying once you’ve come to the right conclusion and things slip right into place. There was even one that I had been stuck on where the idea kept replaying in my head, only for me to come to the realization right before bed, causing me to quickly boot up the game before I forgot.
For those interested in this game due to its main selling point of math being implemented into the puzzles. It’s both disappointing, and a bit of a relief, that most of the mathematics are simple. As much of the challenge comes from getting the pieces together correctly instead of calculating the correct numbers.
Finally the stages of Block Buster Billy have a bit of an interesting gimmick to them. Where the level select portion are puzzles themselves that require one to jump into a level to unlock a block in the main world. Where after all the levels have been completed, allows progression to the next part.
While one might think this would restrict the order on how you may progress, Block Buster Billy is actually quite non-linear and open. The tutorial portion is straight forward, but once you get into the meat of the game, then you’re free to head into a lot of different directions.
This design helps keeps the frustration of the game’s difficult puzzles to a minimum, as you don’t have to keep bashing your head on a wall trying to figure out what the game wants you to do.
Block Buster Billy is a simple, but well crafted puzzle game that’s sure to provide fans of the Sokoban genre plenty of brain teasing content. It may be a bit overtuned for the casual audience, but veterans will enjoy the challenge.
Block Buster Billy was reviewed on PC (Steam) using a copy provided by Bigosaur. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Block Buster Billy is available for PC (via Steam), with a Nintendo Switch release set for later.
