About a year ago, new development team Empty Clip Studios released their first game, Groovin’ Blocks. Rather than the violent shooter their team name would suggest, Groovin’ Blocks was a music-based puzzle game available through WiiWare. Now they’ve expanded the game with new stages, songs, and modes, and with the help of publishers Zoo Publishing they’ve brought it to retail.

At its core, Groovin’ Blocks is a falling-block puzzle game, much like Tetris, Columns, or a thousand others. Multi-colored shapes fall from the top of the screen and pile up at the bottom, and by matching like colors into sets of three or more you can clear them away. You can chain combos by disappearing blocks that cause other matches to fall into place, and by matching certain specially-marked blocks you can gain a variety of power-ups.

 
Anyone who’s played a falling block puzzle game before will have no problem picking up Groovin’ Blocks.

So far, so good – but if this is all the game consisted of, it’d be a bog-standard puzzler. Luckily, the game has a bit more than that up its sleeves. See, every stage is set to thumping techno, and if you drop your pieces in time to the music you get a score multiplier. As long as keep the beat your multiplier will keep growing, but if you mess up the timing it’s back down to 1X.

 
The vertical lines scrolling toward the playing field on either side give you a visual cue to stay on the beat.

Groovin’ Blocks isn’t the first game to marry puzzle and rhythm gameplay like this; the game is preceded by (and probably inspired by) the games of Q Entertainment, especially Lumines and Meteos. As neither of those games are available on the Wii, Groovin’ Blocks is a decent substitute, and it’s different enough to not be a total rip-off.

That’s not to say, though, that the game is without issues. One of the biggest is the soundtrack – every song is fairly generic-sounding techno, the likes of which gamers have heard over and over again in countless games. For a title with such a huge focus on music and rhythm, that’s a pretty major problem. And as bland as the audio is, the visuals have got them beat; shiny primary-colored blocks as far as the eye can see don’t do much to keep your interest.

But the game’s biggest problem is the fact that, as I previously mentioned, it’s already available as a WiiWare download. Sure, they’ve added a few new songs, but they’re no more enjoyable than the ones included in the original. A few visual tweaks and upgrades are present, but the graphics still aren’t very interesting. Essentially, they’ve put the same game on a disc and upped the price by twelve bucks.

Groovin’ Blocks isn’t a bad puzzler by any means. It’s different enough to stand out, and the classic falling block formula is intuitive and fun, as always. If you’re a puzzle game fan with a sense of rhythm and you’re looking for something different, it’s certainly worth a try. But the only reason to pick up the retail version over the year-old WiiWare release is if you simply cannot connect your Wii online. If you have any way to get your hands on the downloadable version, there’s really no reason to give this disc a second look.

Gameplay: 7.2
Match colored blocks to the thumping techno beat. Most gamers have matched falling blocks over and over for years, but the added rhythm elements give the game its own spin.

Graphics: 5.5
It’s not an ugly game, just uninteresting. Games like Meteos and Lumines show that, with a little style and creativity, even a falling block puzzler can be visually captivating. Groovin’ Blocks’ visuals, on the other hand, won’t hold your attention any longer than it takes you to realize that, yes, everything on screen is shiny.

Sound: 6.5
Maybe if you’re a die-hard techno fan you’ll dig the tunes you’ll be dropping blocks to. Personally, I was simply reminded of the legion of games that have come and gone that had similarly forgettable techno soundtracks.

Difficulty: Medium
Once your brain has adjusted to the challenge of solving puzzles and keeping in rhythm, you’ll be able to cruise through stages in that Zen mindset that puzzle games tend to induce. As the game goes on, tempos pick up, so anyone looking for a challenge will definitely find one in the game’s later stages.

Concept: 7.0
Merging puzzle and rhythm gameplay styles isn’t the most obvious combination to make, but it works pretty well in practice.

Overall: 6.8
It’s a fun puzzler and a reasonable Wii alternative to games like Lumines, but this retail release doesn’t really do anything to justify its purchase over the WiiWare original. Only true die-hard fans of the original or Wii owners with no ability to download should pick this up in disc form.