Falling Block Jam 2025
A distant analog memory
Organizer: davemakes
Ran From: September 12-21, 2025
I was very excited when Falling Block Jam was announced, and I'm very thankful for the hard work everyone put into it, and to davemakes for setting up the jam in the first place! The result is a showcase of just how creative people can get with the basic puzzle genre framework, with more than 200 submissions. There are spins on puzzle staples, complex new concepts, and entries mixing other genres entirely. I'd like to showcase my favorites! Hopefully I can make full pages for some of these games later on, but for now I'll keep things brief.
I'll get my bias out of the way, and start with my friend Sunrysky's Circuit Makers. The feel of moving pieces in Panel De Pon is replicated remarkably well. Blocks are cleared in circuits as small as a 2x2 square, or as big as the length of the board. In the harder difficulties, you'll have to make circuits around garbage blocks to clear them, so you can't just rely on 2x2 blocks. I love how many ways you can make combos, taking blocks inside and out of your circuits into account. Once you've got a combo multiplier, it lingers as long as you can keep making more. It's fun to squeeze several more points out of some impromptu matches. The candy colored blocks look lovely and you even have a character hanging out on the side of the screen (most important feature of the genre). Her name is Circe and she's funny. Also, listen to the OST by my other friend Erika! It's so good!
There's another great circuit-related game in the jam called PCB. You place connectors while using the mouse to draw connections through the board. It took me a moment to figure out, but it's definitely worth your time! It helps once you realize you can thread your connection through components. The more you can connect at once, the more room you'll have added to your board. It's got a slick colorful look and stand-out music as well.
Jelly Well is a quick physics-based matching game. Nefarious bosses will descend into the well, and you have to make matches next to them to attack. It becomes frantic very quickly, and the a capella sound design is wonderful.
The juiciest game here has to be Cascadence. It's a very tactile game of 2x2 squares and color reversing. It looks and feels fantastic, and I've got to find someone to play it in multiplayer with. You keep building and building on your matches until it all explodes. Overall a very polished experience!
I really enjoyed the unique way of moving blocks in Rainbow Dolphin- as a dolphin, you can push stacks upwards, and then move to the side and push them around before they land. It feels great to get the hang of. You have to make a stack of cassettes in number order, so you'll have to be precise.
Flatris is a fun spin on Tetris with great presentation. You'll have to fit your pieces onto a flat board with as little overlap as possible. You'll still need to get line clears (horizontal or vertically) to make more space on your board. The visuals for the three different themes are fantastic, and there's an impressive amount of variety in modes and options. There's even a cheese mode.
Ochibana: Fallen Flowers uses a hanafuda deck as pieces. Knowing (or figuring out) which cards will match together is part of the challenge, but the main goal is to have a high-scoring set of cards on your board after all of them have been placed. Specific sets will give you point bonuses, while making chains will increase a score multiplier. You'll have to figure out what you want to keep and what you want to use for matches. The focus on the score system is very unique and I'm a big fan of it.
Anyone who knows their way around Minesweeper should give Rotornalia a shot. Just as in that game, you have to use number indicators to check how many mines are adjacent. Doing that while the board is quickly rising is another thing entirely. You can rotate a group of four blocks, and the indicators will update appropiately- you can use this to help find mines. Once you know where a mine is, you can select one or two of the blocks in your cursor (use a diagonal input to just pick one) to detonate them. If it's right, it's cleared, and if you get two at once you'll clear the whole row or column. Guess wrong, and the board will move up faster.
Memory Tricks is an adorable mix of falling blocks with memory matching, a concept I'm surprised I haven't seen done before. You have to clear the face down cards on the board by placing a matching suit next to it. The next card you draw is determined by which column you place it in, giving you something else to keep track of while remembering which cards are face down.
MONEY is scary. Columns-esque, but demanding exact precision as the walls close in if you don't make a match. You'll run out of space quickly if you don't plan ahead. Has a very harsh and off-putting vibe to it that I think is cool.
Project Omni might be the game I've put the most time into here. You have to handle blocks from several different games at once- jewels from Columns, blocks from Tetris, treasures from Cleopatra Fortune, and more. Pieces work on their own logic, but different types can make matches together based on colors (Pink Puyo can match with pink pills) or their type (Lumines blocks can finish a Tetris line clear). I love it. It's chaotic, but there's a method to the madness.
Dino Feast is about feeding leaves to very stretchy dinosaurs. Certain blocks will turn the dinos in other directions, and you can get them stuck on each other if you're not careful. Levels introduce more gimmicks as you go, with the most fun one being the magnets that dinos will stretch towards, eating any leaves on the way. A very cute little game.
I'm delighted by DOCTORvsVIRUS, a physical card game that can be played with any standard deck. It replicates the feeling of Dr. Mario in such a different form. You want to match card suits to clear them, but you'll lose if you accidentally put two cards with adjacent values together. When you clear a set of cards, you can use it later to redraw. You have to be very careful to not accidentally make a Virus, but you'll also lose if you build too high up... I played for a good hour or so, but haven't won yet. It's really fun, and the concept is amazing. I definitely recommend learning how to play!
Chunkster is lovely. It gives me the specific feeling of playing flash games in a computer lab. You have to rotate either a little domino or a oddly-shaped pentamino through a set of levels to a certain spot. It uses the muscle memory of Tetris rotation in such a novel way, and offers some difficult climbing challenges at the end. The sound effects and visuals are fantastic as well- rolling and scooting the blocks around is so pleasant.
Paranatural: Spirit Stackers from Friend & Fairy is a very cute versus game. Similar to Super Puzzle Fighter and Baku Baku, you have energy pieces that clear regular blocks of the same color. The main difference is that energy pieces will seek out blocks horizontally or vertically, regardless of distance, passing through garbage blocks but not other colors. You'll send more garbage to your opponent the further the energy travels, so you're encouraged to build chains in an interesting way. Reaching through a huge pile of garbage blocks to clear something at the bottom and getting a chance at a comeback feels great.
In The Court of The Falling Blocks has you deal with an irresponsible amount of falling blocks at once. You can position the set of incoming blocks by moving them left and right, and then let them drop. It makes for a very strategic game, and there are some fun variety modes as well.
Let's wrap this up with some arbitrary and exciting awards.
Thank you for reading!
