You crack open the door to the East Islip High School cafeteria and you hear this peculiar sound of silence. Everyone is frozen like a statue staring into the screens of their phones. As you progress through the cafeteria you realize nobody is utilizing popular social media platforms or texting their friends. They’re playing this mind tickling game called Block Blast. You can see the intense focus in their eyes as they move each block into the arena and you say to yourself, why?
Are you addicted to Block Blast like everyone else in the world? According to PocketGamer, on average there are about 40 million people blasting their days away on this app daily. For context, 40 million people is the population of the state of California. The game currently has 200 million downloads and it is skyrocketing off the charts in the App Store.
Block Blast is a strategic game similar to Tetris that involves the movement of blocks that are different shapes on a grid. The whole idea of the game is to clear the board of blocks. When you fill a row or column it will disappear giving you points, and you get a higher amount of points when you get combos by clearing more than one row or column consecutively. When you don’t have any blocks left that fit you have lost that game.
According to The Wintrust Sports Complex, phone games like Block Blast are such addictive games because of self competition. The game will keep track of your high score throughout every game you play. People spend hours on it trying to beat their high score to make them feel good about themselves.
Some say it’s a complete waste of time and the game is absolutely ridiculous, others might look at it from a different perspective and say it’s helping people think differently.
Anna Fantauzzi, a student at East Islip High School, plays Block Blast. “Well technically you have to critically think about where you are placing blocks, like a puzzle,” she said. “I think it probably helps with some cognitive function.”
One feature that could be quite annoying is the amount of ads. Fantauzzi states “ I really dislike the ads. It’s very annoying when I don’t choose to get another life and then I have to watch an ad anyways to start a new game.“ Things like these can make the platform annoying to use and could attract less attention.
There is always a trending game and more will for sure be in our future. What will be next?