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Poker Blocks started as an experiment in Physics based games back in 2003 right after I finished doing ZooCube. I always thought a Physics based puzzle game would be quite interesting, and after seeing TripTych I started to think of what kinds of ideas might work well.
Build a prototype
Then I did some experimentation and created a simple physics prototype game with coloured blocks that fell, and when 3 or more in a row had the same colour the row disappeared. Parts of this prototype were interesting, but there was not enough to make a whole game.
Conclude that coloured block games are too contrived
At the same time I noticed that most “block” puzzle games were quite esoteric and were far too contrived and not very engaging. The average person would find these games difficult to get into and not very exciting. How much better they could be if they leveraged a player’s existing knowledge of something they new well, so that the rules were self-evident...
Make the Yahtzee connection
In 2004 while on a plane in Orlando I noticed a very large woman squirming in her seat and she was becoming most agitated, as she had a handbag in one hand and a plastic yellow calculator sized device in the other. Turns out it was a handheld Yahtzee game that was frustrating her, presumably because she could not make the hands she wanted. I had never played Yahtzee before and wondered what the fuss was all about. So I bought it and found the single player game to be quite unexciting and the lack of player control made it quite a tedious experience.
Invent Poker Blocks
So I thought “wouldn’t it be nice where rather than coloured blocks you could use Poker dice? ...like the type I played when I was at school? and it would be even better if you could actually control the hands that you made?
I thought this game would never get made
After scraping together some funding my team focussed on developing the Sticky Rules game, as I could not find a decent 2D physics library for love nor money. Then in late 2006 I came across Erin Catto’s Box2D physics library which he presented at GDC earlier in the year. This was based on “sequential impulses” and after knocking up a quick test it seemed perfect, and the Bouncy Rules version was born.
Physics is Fun!
After testing the first Bouncy Rules version I thought we had something special and quite unique. Using the mouse to pickup and throw blocks around seemed far more intuitive than the keyboard, and when I showed my kids they thought the whole idea was really cool.
I wanna tell you a story...
Late in the day we added a story based around the Las Vegas strip, with each level being a different casino that players would play in. The goal is to cross Sunset Strip and Ocean Drive in a car which is upgraded every $100,000 - can you do it?
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