In 1993, Doug and Larry Murk of Soleau Software released BLOCK-MAN 1.0. I first played Block-Man at my grandmother's house as a young lad circa 1996. I loved going to her house because she had a few of those old "demo CDs" which would have dozens of Shareware/Demo games on them (this was of course back before broadband Internet access was widely available). Since Block-Man was "shareware", it happened to be included on one of those discs.
As I played the game, I was intrigued by its deceitfully simple gameplay:
Little blocks, innocently stacked in random piles amidst a room, radiated with
childlike playfulness; yet, as the levels progressed, the task of arranging
them in such a way as to reach the exit became a puzzle far too complex for
most grown men! (Well, at least too complex for me at the time)
Being the avid nine-year-old BASIC programmer I was, I figured I'd attempt to
implement my own version of Block-Man. I did so rather succesfully, adding my own touches such as "telepads" and new abilities to push blocks and turn around without walking. These additions gave the game a somewhat different dynamic, and I was pleased overall with the result, except for one big problem: I had written the whole thing in Microsoft QBasic! As my code grew larger and larger, eventually reaching the size-limit of the feeble QBasic interpreter, I came to the harsh realization that I would need to learn a real programming language if I ever wanted to finish my version of Block-Man.
Many years elapsed, but I eventually discovered Linux and then finally got
around to learning enough C++ that I was able to rewrite the game from scratch and produce what I now call Blockling.
I hope you enjoy it.
Andrew Anderson
March 2010
P.S.
In December of 2013, I made this port for the GCW Zero!
As I played the game, I was intrigued by its deceitfully simple gameplay:
Little blocks, innocently stacked in random piles amidst a room, radiated with
childlike playfulness; yet, as the levels progressed, the task of arranging
them in such a way as to reach the exit became a puzzle far too complex for
most grown men! (Well, at least too complex for me at the time)
Being the avid nine-year-old BASIC programmer I was, I figured I'd attempt to
implement my own version of Block-Man. I did so rather succesfully, adding my own touches such as "telepads" and new abilities to push blocks and turn around without walking. These additions gave the game a somewhat different dynamic, and I was pleased overall with the result, except for one big problem: I had written the whole thing in Microsoft QBasic! As my code grew larger and larger, eventually reaching the size-limit of the feeble QBasic interpreter, I came to the harsh realization that I would need to learn a real programming language if I ever wanted to finish my version of Block-Man.
Many years elapsed, but I eventually discovered Linux and then finally got
around to learning enough C++ that I was able to rewrite the game from scratch and produce what I now call Blockling.
I hope you enjoy it.
Andrew Anderson
March 2010
P.S.
In December of 2013, I made this port for the GCW Zero!
