Blocked Car (Game Review)

I remember seeing earlier versions of this basic phone-type game on a Pocket PC. It was cool then, but in this case, maybe only okay.

This version is called Blocked Car and is brought to you by those busy people at DS Effects, who are a leading (according to them) producer of web and mobile solutions. They do games, virtual pets, and "dress up."

Here's how it works. You have a yellow car (at the bottom) and you want to move your car to the top and out of the parking lot. A world-wide problem, if ever there was one.

You move some of the other cars and trucks out of the way by flicking them. Here's after I've flicked a few cars out of the way. The two red cars, the blue on the right, the green on the right. Note that I've moved the purple-cab truck to the right, making space for the yellow car.

Finally, when enough cars and trucks are flicked out of the way, the yellow car can escape!

This is a simple game. Lots of levels, everything works. Good!

However, I had some problems at the start, some of which were me and others were the fault of the developer for not having good (or any) instructions. One point off!

Problem 1: In earlier games like this, the other cars can only leave through the one exit. But they can move back and forth. In this game the cars can leave on any side, and once they start moving, they can't stop and just move off the parking lot. In some ways this isn't as much a challenge, but that's okay and I don't want to take points off for having this game play differently than some earlier one.

Problem 2: I have trouble telling which way the cars move. For some reason, I couldn't get the idea that the eyes are in the front of the vehicle, maybe because the rest of the car is visually catching my eye. Again, no points off. Maybe I just need to watch the movie, Cars, a few more times!

Problem 3: There's no button that lets me replay a game. If I want to go again, I have to ram the yellow car into an obstacle. It would be nice to choose to play levels again, and this wouldn't be hard to implement. One point off here!

These problems aren't killer, but they do make me not rate the game as high as I would like. This is a nice little game and works well on Firefox OS!

Cost: Free

Genre: Puzzle
Score: 3 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open (Firefox OS)
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace