PLAY IT HERE

Speed Blocks is the latest entry in my “Jam Series” of games. It is also the first to release under the “Garrett Makes Games” branding.

Speed Blocks was built over the course of two weeks using the Godot game engine.

Inspired by Glitch Sweeper it takes a classic game (Tetris) and makes it a faster paced competitive game. Scoring is handled differently, with colors building a multiplier for your score. Players must balance waiting on maximum point combos with a limited amount of game time.

This is my first game to include mobile controls in the initial release!

The “Jam Series” leaderboard system has been updated with improved anti-cheat along with improved visuals.

Things learned

Tetris has a defined standard

I never knew before that Tetris has a defined standard of what makes a Tetris game. Speed Blocks does not adhere to the standard, and I was okay with that being that it’s a “twist” on the formula. It was very interesting to read though!

Tetris Guideline

Improved use of Godot styles

Toward the end of development I dove into the Godot styling system. It was more powerful than I realized, and enabled me to style the buttons consistently with ease.

Mobile HTML is sometimes difficult with Godot

Making the screen adaptive with Godot can be difficult in the HTML export. Unfortunately the mobile port may sometimes skew and stretch to match the device screen. This is not a game breaking issue, but is not an ideal user experience. In the future I will look into a more customized HTML export template to enable more control over the page’s responsiveness.

Additionally, the mobile HTML export does not properly trigger a phone’s virtual keyboard for text fields. If playing on a touch device, you may notice that a native prompt is shown to enter your name for a score. This was not my initial plan, but triggering the device virtual keyboard proved difficult. This solution was not optimal but it allows mobile users to submit their scores and is a minor part of the overall experience.