Block'hood Is Lovely Hyper-Minimalist Citybuilding
Build a street out of cubes.
I'm on a simplicity kick of late, as is probably clear from today's posts. Block'hood [official site] fits into that theme wonderfully, taking the resource and layout management concepts of a citybuilder and condensing it into designing single plots of land. With a space of around 100 squares you have to produce electricity, food, money and so on to power a vertically sprawling building. If you don't balance out all the different demands of both the people and areas you create, they'll decay into nothingness. It's beautifully put together, oozing easy to use clarity for everything. Have a look below.
There's a gameplay trailer that shows some already well-established buildings, but this first developer diary is much better for finding out how the game actually plays:
I love how contained everything is. All these view modes and options and information easily accessible but hidden so the basic beauty of the game can come to the fore. Maybe I just really like cubes. Either way, it's the sort of city-builder I could see myself actually getting into, structured more as a small puzzle game than a labyrinthine adventure in management. It maintains that real-world grounding, logic and cyclical resources without the massive scale I find somewhat intimidating.
While this video is showing off the freeplay mode, the challenge mode puzzles would be the main draw for me. They should provide a bigger base to build upon which I always find easier to turn into something great than a blank canvas. Block'hood is still making its way through Greenlight as development continues. The plan for release is later this year.