Block Shift Game (Win32)

This is the first personal game project I've made ever since graduating from UCSD, titled Block Shift!
This game is currently only for Windows (I'll port it to mobile devices eventually), and the game installer can be downloaded from here.
This post will explain more about the game features in more detail.

Main Menu screen

When you first run the game, you'll be prompted to enter a nickname. The nickname can be changed at any time from the Settings page. The Settings button is found at the bottom left of the main menu.

Note that nicknames cannot be left blank, and you can only use English letters and numbers for it.

Game settings screen

When the game starts, bricks will start falling down. As time progresses, the game will speed up.

Game start

While this looks like a Tetris® game, the gameplay is entirely different:

• Use the left/right arrow keys (or A/D keys) to move bricks on the ground to the left/right
• Press the down arrow key (or S key) to make the bricks fall down faster
• To destroy bricks, left mouse click on any brick that is connected to at least 3 other bricks of the same color to destroy the entire group.
• While bricks can be cleared when they are in a group of at least 4, clearing larger groups will get you more points!

Difficulty increases over time

On the left side of the screen are skills that can be used to make the game easier. Note that using them will result in your score getting slightly reduced:

• Temporarily slow the game speed
• Destroy the bottom row of bricks
• Temporarily allows groups of 3 bricks to be cleared

Will you save your points, or will you spend them for a chance to gain more?

You can flaunt your performance with friends by taking a screenshot with the P key (this saves a screenshot to the game folder), and keep track of your highest 10 scores in the High Scores page!

This game will certainly have future updates in addition to the planned mobile port. Some features to expect in an upcoming update include:

• More game modes
• Customizable themes and audio for the game
• Recording your game

Credits and acknowledgements:

Game design, programmer & sounds: Hoang Tran (myself)

Game default background image obtained from DeviantArt

Thanks to my many friends on Steam for testing the game and giving feedback in its early stages!

This game uses several external libraries for convenient utilities:

• SDL 2 library by Sam Lantinga for window management
• SDL_ttf library by Sam Lantinga for text rendering
• SDL_mixer library by Sam Lantinga, Stephane Peter, and Ryan Gordon for audio playback
• FreeImage open source library, version 3.17.0, used under the GNU public license, for loading and producing image assets