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Star Blocks

Falling blocks just like the 1988 arcade games, filmed on Fametown movie sets: clear lines and survive each stage, as everything falls faster.

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STAR BLOCKS

Fit the pieces, clear lines and survive stage after stage: each one falls faster than the last.

Opening scene
  • Mobile: swipe sideways to move, tap to rotate, and swipe down quickly to drop. You also have buttons.
  • Keyboard: arrow keys to move and drop, ↑ or X to rotate, Z for counterclockwise, space to hard drop and P to pause.
  • Controller: D-pad to move, A and B to rotate, up to drop and Start to pause.
Opening scene
Touch buttons

←→ move · ↓ drop · ↑ or X rotate · Z rotate counterclockwise

Espacio hard drop · P pause · Intro start

You advance a stage every 4 lines or when the stage timer runs out. The multiplier grows every two stages, up to ×5.

The Pieces

  • The I-piece: the only one that clears four lines at once.
  • The square: does not rotate; fills gaps of 2×2.
  • The te: four positions, works for almost everything.
  • The ese and the zeta: fit together on steps.
  • Rotate them vertically to fill uneven gaps.
  • The J and the L: corners and walls.
  • Perfect for filling the gap in the strip.
  • Star block: sometimes a piece carries one; clear its line and you earn a bonus.

You see the next piece in the NEXT box. There is no stored piece: as in the arcade, you play with whatever comes. If you hit something when rotating, the piece tries to shift one square over (the stack does not).

Scoring

1 line CUT!100 × mult.
2 lines GOOD TAKE!400 × mult.
3 lines BIG SCENE!900 × mult.
4 lines PERFECT TAKE!2,000 × mult.
Drop with ↓ (row by row)1 × mult.
Hard drop (per row)1
Star block in your line300 × mult.
Clean well (empty after the move)combo × 5

Multiplier: ×1 on stages 0 and 1, ×2 on the 2 and 3, ×3 on the 4 and 5, ×4 on the 6 and 7, and ×5 from the 8 on.

Starting bonus: if you start on stage 3, 5, 7 or 9, you earn 2,000, 4,000, 7,000 or 12,000 points for clearing your first stage.

Stages and Speed

You advance a stage every 4 lines, or when the stage timer runs out (58 s on the 0, 39 s from the 1 to the 8, 58 s on the 9 and the 10, and 29 s from the 11 to the 14), and you place a piece without clearing a line. Each new stage is a new episode.

Frames it takes the piece to drop one row (60 per second):

On stage 10 there's a breather, as in the arcade, and from the 15 on the piece drops one row per frame. When it hits bottom you have half a second to reposition it; with ↓ it locks instantly.

Movie sets: Studio (0-2), Premiere (3-5), Walk of Fame (6-8), Red Carpet (9-11) and Grand Neon Boulevard (12-14), then back to the start.

About Star Blocks

Star Blocks is our tribute to the late-1980s falling block arcade games: a 10×20 well, seven four-block pieces, a single-piece preview, and a speed that starts off calm and ends up frantic. The progression and scoring rules follow the spirit of those 1988 machines, while the graphics, sounds and movie sets are our own, in pixel art with the shine of Fametown.