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The best puzzle games are born from pure abstraction. Blocks fall for reasons completely alien to
the player, they're assembled into arbitrary forms, and then disappear into the aether.
Plot? Characters? ***. All we want is a challenge, and mechanics that are pure and
simple because they're required to do absolutely nothing else. Critical Mass is this most basic
form of puzzle game, with a bright, shiny mass of cubes and two-button mechanics (left-mouse-button-drag
to rotate the puzzle, and right-click to place a block). It takes its simplicity seriously,
and applies it in a couple interesting ways. While playing, my frenzy in blowing up blocks
reminded me of Tetrisphere, and man do I wish I could be reminded of Tetrisphere more often.
The goal, much like the game, is simple: connect four blocks of the same color, and they explode.
Easy-peasy, until you're under the gun and need to puzzle out just where in this 3D form
is best to drop whichever block you're holding. So long as you keep connecting blocks, the
form will effectively stay put; slack off, though, and it'll creep closer and closer
to the screen, until it reaches critical mass (hey, that's the name of the game!) and explodes.
The more blocks you manage to clear at once, the more pronounced your reprieve, so if you're
just chunking along little four-block combos, you're going to be living on the edge fairly
quickly. Fortunately, you've got a direct representation of what block is coming next,
allowing for pinpoint precision that feels much more accurate than I expected. When placing
blocks; you're not limited by... well, reality; while it looks like the blocks fly in from
offscreen to the point you indicate, that doesn't stop you from potentially putting
blocks inside, behind, and under other formations for the sake of maximum clearance. Three power-ups
can come into play, hotkeyed to the 1, 2, and 3 keys: a 3x Score Multiplier, a time
warp that slows the ever-threatening mass of cubes, and a fusion pulse that effectively
resets that level's timer.
The basic gameplay concept of Critical Mass is further adapted into four distinct game
modes: the "Classic" mode, where the goal is to clear a particular mass of blocks; "Survival"
mode, where more blocks are added for each combo you clear, with level-ups and breathers
given at timed intervals; "Meditation" mode, where there's no time limit and no danger,
allowing for the most optimized combos within a certain number of block placements; and
"Rush" mode, which starts you off with 250,000 points and deducts 250 every second... despite
it stating down there by the timer that it's actually deducting 1,250. Despite this bit
of inaccuracy, it's interesting flavors of a stylish little puzzler - that can adopt
colorblind-friendly markings if necessary. My primary gripe is that there seems to be
only one musical track, so feel free to drop the background audio to zero and run some
Protomen or Hyadain underneath this to attempt to preserve your sanity. This review will
self-destruct in six seconds.