Flipcage -- my latest Javascript game plan

Once upon a Time

Imagine that you have a 12x12 grid, sitting on a black screen. A shape appears above the grid, and starts moving down. The shape is made of four square blocks, and you can rotate it 90 degrees and shift it left and right with your arrow keys. Once it lands at the bottom, another shape appears above the grid. If your shapes form a complete row, the row explodes and the blocks above it move down. And once 5 rows are completed, the entire grid rotates 90 degrees...

That sounds familar...

For most of that paragraph, you might've thought I'm making Tetris. However, in Flipcage, the block well rotates once you make at least 5 complete rows of blocks. And once it rotates, the entire formation inside settles to the bottom. This means you can add shapes to your formation from four different sides. Now that's a neat twist!

(and a really awesome pun...)

What happens if I make a column of blocks from top to bottom?

You probably think it'll become a complete row once the block well rotates. Think again.

Remember that the block well rotates once at least 5 rows are completed. That means it takes at least 1 complete row to cause a rotation. If a row is removed, your column won't go from top to bottom anymore -- so it won't become a complete row on rotation!

How about Pentris?

It might be fun if the shapes had between 1 and 5 blocks, instead of the usual 4. I played Pentris recently, and it's definitely interesting -- but needs a bigger board. Leave a comment if that sounds interesting...

Sounds cool! Where can I find it?

This game is coming soon to SoloKingdom.com. I estimate it will be out by September 2009. Stay tuned!