It’s nice to see another falling-block-jam game!
I like the mix of “loose” (Puyo-style) and stuck-together (Tetris-style) blocks. I was too focused on the ship to notice that they were different the first round I played, but it opens up more strategic possibilities, particularly with the limitation that you can’t rotate the blocks (unless I missed something, and rotation is possible). I also liked the ability to group together blocks while falling so that they form a larger color-cluster-match when landing.
Grabbing blocks felt pretty smooth as long as I was playing “slowly” — that is, if I let the ship come to a complete stop on its own, instead of accelerating in the opposite direction to come to a stop faster. When I started trying to play faster, I had a lot more missed grabs. I think the mix of the “floaty” ship controls (momentum-based motion rules + floating-point-based positioning) and the “snappy” blocks (discrete/int-based grid positioning) is a tricky thing to balance.
The first round I played, the time-limit surprised me. After playing a few rounds, I actually feel like it’s a good length, it just isn’t being communicated effectively for me — I’m so focused on the ship and alignment of falling blocks that I don’t really notice the remaining time on the right. If there were more animation there to draw the eye periodically (e.g. as it passes certain thresholds), or on-the-board announcements of the time remaining (“2 minutes left!”), I think that would help communicate the pace to me. The ~5-second (?) warning is so faint on my monitor that I didn’t notice it until my third round, and 5 seconds also doesn’t feel like enough time for me to really engage in a final rush to score—maybe 10 seconds would work better in that regard.
I scored bronze the first time, and silver consistently after that. I’m not sure what would be required to get a gold, as the board itself was pretty empty at the end and the scoring rules seem to be just 1 point for each block cleared, with no multipliers(?). Maybe there are more drops with more players, giving more scoring opportunities? (I played solo.)