Realistic Elements
With most city building games you face realistic elements such as community emphasis and revenue, but Block’hood focuses more on ecology and decay. There are currently over 60 blocks put into the game, and each one has a different input and output that affects the surrounding area.
Networking blocks together is a main focal point, where blocks are dependent on one another, and to have the best outcome of production you’ll need to concentrate on the resources you want to produce. The result of decay happens when a block is unable to acquire the inputs they need as a resource.
There are a few modes available to play within Block’hood, such as:
Sandbox - Using all blocks available to create a neighborhood of your liking, learning how block inputs and outputs work together. Challenge - Puzzle mode that includes a limited number of blocks where a certain goal is to be accomplished. Block’hood will release with 3 challenge stages, adding more over time. Education - A longer tutorial that educates the gamer on how the entropy and ecology technology works within the game.
The brains behind Block’hood
Jose Sanchez is the main developer behind Block’hood, with block design assistance from Gentaro Makinoda and contributions from Satoru Sugihara, Sergio Irigoyen, Joshua Dawson and Nels Long.
Sanchez developed Block’hood in an academic environment using player interactions as a way to improve the game with the realistic elements.
Block’hood is set to release in late 2015, hopefully on Steam if they pass the Greenlight phase. The developers will be releasing more information through their Twitter and Facebook account as they continue development.
What do you think of this type of city building game? It seems drastically different from SimCity; in all the right ways.
