Motley Blocks on Android: Complete fun shapes, one square at a time

We got our first taste of Motley Blocks via a hands-on demo at E3 2012, and while the wait was a long one, interested gamers can now get their hands on the final product as Square Enix has announced the launch of Motley Blocks for Android. We've also been able to dive into the full version of Motley Blocks, and have found that the game's colorful, hectic gameplay is thankfully enjoyable enough to overcome the game's technical issues.

Each level of Motley Blocks sees you tapping and dragging your finger across the screen to create a chain of like colored squares that are moving around in circles on the screen. These squares, when destroyed, will zoom into the middle of the screen to form a final image (the complexity of the image determines the difficulty of the overall stage). Thankfully, even though each individual square is quite tiny, the game is really forgiving when it comes to tapping accuracy, allowing you to create chains of 20 or more blocks at the same time. The more blocks you destroy at once, the more bonus points you'll earn, so this setup definitely helps. Each stage is timed, and if you allow the blocks to make three complete rotations around the inner shape before collecting them all, you'll fail the stage and will be required to try again.

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Power-up blocks can be activated mid-level, including score multipliers, bombs and more. More variety comes via the inclusion of a level editor, giving creative gamers a chance to create images with multi-colored blocks that can then be sent to friends. If a level is popular enough, it may even be adopted as a complete level in the overall Motley Blocks experience.

Even though the tapping accuracy is fairly forgiving, it is possible to accidentally break your combo by moving your finger over a non-matching square. This eliminates the entire line that you've drawn before, which encourages strategy as you'll need to decide whether or not navigating a small pathway with the tip of your finger is really worth the risk, both in terms of earned points and wasted time. Speaking of wasting time, Motley Block's biggest issue is easily its menu system, which is unintuitive and confusing, especially when it comes to setting up an account (which is required to unlock all of the game's features). The game's Facebook Connect is unresponsive or can cause the app to crash, and the account registration is hidden behind a symbol with no text, making it difficult to figure out it's even there without simply tapping around the screen and hoping to get lucky.

While Motley Blocks has relatively simple gameplay, it's a deceptively easy setup that can become quite challenging in later stages, when blocks move around more quickly or simply come in more colors. It's unfortunate that the game comes with so many technical issues in terms of setting up an account or logging in with Facebook, as I could see these being deal breakers for someone that's only casually interested in the experience. Still, if you stick around through the rough opening, Motley Blocks is definitely one fun puzzle game that's worth playing.

If you're interested in trying Motley Blocks, you can now download the game for free on the Amazon App Store for Android. It's coming soon to iOS.

Click here to download Motley Blocks on the Amazon App Store >

Have you tried Motley Blocks, or are you waiting for the game to come out on iOS before giving it a try? Sound off in the comments!