Puzzle gameplay. Puzzle gameplay never changes.

The Russians developed puzzle games to gather performance data, Hawaiian corporate residence, and wealth. The Spokanites built an inscrutable ludoarcheological empire from their lust for more than rice and beans. Infocom shaped a battered virtual machine into interactive superpowers.

In A.D. 1991, war was still beginning over the generic falling block puzzle games that were yet to be programmed. From the ashes of DOS games, an obscure new hybrid of two simple games would struggle to arise.

In 1997, the name of Fallout would be used again. In two brief decades, most of the niche gameplay was reduced to cinders.

Life in the gestalt is not about to change.


I'm the mad guy? How'd that happen? Did you know I build weird weapons?



This one loosely, slowly, and uncomfortably emulates an incredibly popular falling block game (GREAT VALUE - 1-GAMES-IN-1!) that either you or your father might have liked to play obsessively on road trips.
                            * Batteries and Korobushka not included.


The weapon (which appears to be a mere pair of glasses, but is not worn like glasses) is found on an entry table in Kellogg's house, a place that is in some sense where the pieces are finally put together. By my reckoning, this is the last Diamond City interior (which is not the player house) to be populated by weapons in my EPA Weird Weapons series.

Once you throw the weapon, a game board will be spawned in tile-by-tile (or lightbox-by-lightbox if you prefer). Once the board is loaded in, a random falling block will be chosen and will descend towards the bottom of the play-clearing.

If it hits the bottom of the field, or another block, it should stop. Another block will be chosen, assuming it is not too close to the top of the board. This block will descend similarly. If you fill a row with block matter, the row should be eliminated, and your score will go up. If you happen to get enough score, your level will increase. As with nearly all games of this type (and, sadly, nearly all games in general), your score doesn't really matter at all in the end...

You can translate a falling block by looking at the left or the right side of the board. You should hear a click once the translation is buffered for execution on the next block update (2 updates per frame of descent). When you use the weapon, you will also get a gun. Shooting the gun will allow you to schedule a rotation for the falling block. You should hear a similar sound enqueueing a rotation. The rotation will be either clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on whether you are crouched. Translations and rotations must not lead to overlapping or out-of-bounds blocks.

Hopefully this generically gives you a high-level idea of the game-within-a-game-play loop being alluded to here.

The game is hard to play. Harder than you remember it. To make it more exciting for you, and also still a weapon, I've dutifully added the customary amount of death and explosions.

I'LL FALL DOWN: First, when you get a new block that is not the initial one, a nearby NPC, if eligible, will be dropped from above the board, and likely die.

BLOCKBUSTING: Second, if you clear a line, each block will be cleared in the line, and a corresponding eligible NPC will spontaneously explode in the distance.

THE POINT OF NO RETURN: Do you know what that is, Beth? When you get a Game Over, the board will explode, line by line. It's a bit of Blast Processing.

Be sure to play outside in a large, clear, well-ventilated, and dimly-lit area!
Like a certain accursed board game, once you start a game, you should complete it...