Past, Present and Future Snake: Blockage

Blockage is a game developed for the 2012 Global Game Jam, an event where developers gather in various parts of the world and make a game in 48 hours. The theme this time was visual; an image of a snake eating its own tail.

Blockage has control and rule similarities to Snake: automatic forward movement, and if you run into yourself or a wall, the level restarts. The game takes these mechanics and applies them very differently though.

In each single screen room, there is an entrance and an exit. When entering the next room, vestigial blocks appear based on the path taken in the previous room. So while the first room may have its entrance and exit on the bottom level, future levels will require one to use their past self to reach the exit. A preview of the previous and upcoming rooms are on either side.

Blockage gets almost everything right: the rules of the game are explained wordlessly through the progression of first few levels, the puzzles that follow are clever, and the music is in unison with the play--the snake moves forward on the beat.

Trying to judge the distance between objects in a 3D space from an isometric perspective can be tough at times, though the levels are mostly designed with this limitation in mind.

The version of Blockage available now isn’t the original one made in 48 hours but it is much better. The original felt like a sketch, a game with great ideas that could use some expanding upon and finer tuning. The updated version of Blockage did that; it feels like the game it wanted to be.

[Play Blockage in a browser here]