Using the story of an “elite fighting force” ridding the city of a block infestation, Block Squad has you turning screens and removing blocks in a different kind of maze.

In case you didn’t want to read the humongous paragraph of instructions on the game page, here’s the gist of how the game works. Your character (a boxing cheerleader or an ape-like man) is in the middle of a bunch of blocks. You click on groups of blocks underneath you to make them disappear, then everything above what you clicked falls downwards. You can turn the screen using z/x or the arrow keys. The point of the game is to collect the random items in the blocks and then head to the door when it opens (after you collect enough items). You have a limited number of moves; blocks in groups of three or more cost one move while fewer than three will cost more moves.

I didn’t enjoy this game. At all. Not only did the story seem to suit 7 year olds, but there wasn’t much of a challenge either. I never came close to running out of moves no matter how horribly I tried to play. You could go around in circles and still eventually get to the next level. Of course, your score wouldn’t be very good, but I would’ve preferred if the moves were more limited or if there were more obstacles to block certain paths.

So you click start game and choose a mode to play (Adventure or Infinite). After choosing your character, you’re shown the instructions. It loops, and it took a minute for me to realize you click anywhere on the screen to proceed to the actual game. Is it so hard to put a “next” button somewhere? Anyways, then there are different levels to choose between. I played through most of them and saw little to no difference in the difficulty. I played the game, got bored, and wanted it to end. But you either have to lose (which is hard to do) or complete all the levels (which I didn’t have the patience to do). There wasn’t even a way to go back to the main menu. The only part about the game that was smart to include was separate leaderboards for the adventure and infinite modes. Other than that, I saw no reason to continue playing Block Squad when all the other games were more inviting.

Maybe the lame storyline left such a bad first impression on me that I was too critical of the game. Try it out, and you just might enjoy it.

Play it at Ningin for free, here.