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Blockland is a non-linear sandbox building game revolving around the mechanic of placing building blocks to create structures, and the ability to save or load them from a personal library. The game runs on the Torque Game Engine and was developed primarily by Eric "Badspot" Hartman under his publishing company Step 1 Games[1], along with assistance from (Anthony) Rotondo and Ben "kompressor" Garney.

Overview

Blockland is a non-linear sandbox game with no set goals, giving players the freedom to design and construct elaborate structures. Styled as a tiny minifigure, players build inside of the virtual world using bricks reminiscent of toy blocks. These structures can be built in either a single-player or multiplayer (either online or through a local area network) setting.

-Description on Badspot.us.[2]

The game costs $9.95 and can be purchased online through Steam. Originally, Blockland was officially released on February 24, 2007, and provided on blockland.us, although, the game was later green-lit by Steam on December 16th, 2013 and was moved to said platform on May 29th, 2020.

As of 2017, Badspot stated updates for Blockland have been discontinued.[3]

History

Blockland Prototype (2004-2005~)

In November of 2004, Eric Hartman released a free-ware 'vanilla' version of Blockland. the game was featured on the Canadian news network The Globe and Mail, and The Screen Savers.[4]

At one point, Lego offered to buy Blockland and give Badspot a job. This offer did not fall through.[5]

Blockland Beta (2005-2006)

Somewhere in July, 2005, Hartman removed all Lego-copyrighted material, and gave the game a complete visual overhaul. The beta introduced full avatar customization along with loading and saving bricks.[6]

Retail Blockland (2007 - Present)

In February of 2007, Blockland was released in retail version for $20.00, on the official website. In this version, there have been around 21 versions released, and around two thousand revisions (currently in revision2005). The retail release of Blockland gradually introduced many features that have become the core appeal to Blockland, such as events and the modern add-on infrastructure.[7]

Blockland Demo

Blockland allows players to experience a free-download demo with some features stripped. In the demo mode, players are not able to connect to internet based servers; restricted players to joining/starting LAN-based or single player servers, restricting the use, and installation of add-ons, and not allowing players to load saves that exceed 150 bricks - and any saves the demo user creates.

When playing on demo mode, players are not assigned a BL_ID, thus, are unable to register an account on the Blockland Forums as well.

Controversy

Offending Christians

In May 2009, Badspot had received negative feedback for both the inclusion of destruction of the in-game ACM CIty church in the Blockland Physics Preview[8], and for a previously included build titled DM Church[9]. While he did not intend for these to be interpreted as an attack on Christianity, a small group of critics were offended. In response to this feedback, Badspot dismissed the critics as 'Jesus nuts', yet, removed the offending build in the Version 13 release; commenting "Removed DM Church save due to jesus nuts complaining."[10]

Following these responses, on May 28, 2009 Badspot posted a thread on the Blockland Forums mocking the authors of the criticisms that were sent to him.[9]

5/2/2020 Key Leak

On May 2nd, 2020, approximately one hundred and nine players' keys were leaked by a hacker on the Blockland Forums. Badspot's response to the issue was to temporarily suspend in-game authentication, linking forum accounts to keys, and disabling keys being transferred to Steam accounts.[11] Some players critiqued him for a suspected lack of knowledge on the matter of account security.

Badspot released a revision patch in attempt to mitigate the problem.[12]

Gallery

Trivia

  • The typeface used for the Blockland logo is called Impact.
  • The bricks featured in Blockland have been identified by players as "Bloko" bricks. This is in response to the save Bloko Blupo.
  • When first registering an account on Blockland, the default name prescribed to the user is "Blockhead" followed by their BL_ID number. That name is also generated for players' offline name until the player changes it. The name Blockhead is most likely a double entendre, as not only does the standard playertype have a blocky head, but the term blockhead can also be used to mean that someone is dull, or dimwitted; reflecting a new user's inexperience in the game.

Citations

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