QbQbQb: Cheerful Planetary Columns-alike On Steam

It's an old game design trick that things will feel good to the player if there are enormous consequences to very small actions. That's why Peggle feels so wonderful when popping that last peg prompts slow motion, zoom, a drum roll, a rainbow, fireworks and Ode to Joy.

QbQbQb seems to have some sense of this: it's a game about rotating a circle in order to collect coloured blocks that are falling from all sides of the screen. Stack three of the same kind and they'll vanish, like in so many other games. But also there are light-trailing butterflies, and shooting stars maybe, and a screen that pulses in and out, and ooh it's all lovely.

QbQbQb was originally made as a Ludum Dare entry, but this more fleshed out version was just recently Greenlit on Steam. There's single player and co-op modes, and each level has an electronic track with, er, karaoke lyrics you can sing along to.

It's also made by Rezoner, the same person responsible for Limbs Repair Station, another free jam game which I fell in love with earlier this year. I hope he returns to that idea now and similarly fleshes it out, with butterflies or anything else.

Oh wait, I just got why it's called QbQbQb. And it's £4 on Steam.