Denki Blocks! Now available in the App Store priced £2.99. Comes with Denki’s Value For Money Guarantee. If you buy it and don’t think it delivers good value for money we’ll donate the purchase price to the World Child Cancer charity.
In case you haven’t heard yet, Denki Blocks! is available to buy from Apple’s App Store. Not just any old version of Denki Blocks! mind, oh no. A version so good Gary Penn reckons it’s the best version we’ve ever made. But don’t let Gary be the judge, you go right ahead and download it this minute and decide for yourself.
And yes, there’s a free version available too – it was made in Scotland after all, and we have our racial stereotypes to think of. Don’t mind me – I’ll still be here when you’re done…
Got it? Good. We all hope you enjoy it. Do let us know if it brightens your day.
I’ve discovered over the years that Denki Blocks! is the kind of game people either love or hate. I’ve personally met far more who love it than hate it, but then they were maybe just being nice because I helped make it, so don’t take that as any indication.
Obviously, we’re all hoping you’ll love it and might even choose to upgrade to the Full version from the Free one. Gary’s collecting back issues of Zzap!64, and I’m buying up all the copies of Go! Go! Beckham! I can find. It’s an expensive business and we need all the help we can get.
The Full version of Denki Blocks! has over 100 additional puzzles to tickle your brain. Each one hand-crafted for maximum flavour to savour like fine mind-toffee. And when you’re done solving them, there’s a Master Challenge to complete to ensure even better value for money. And after that you can still go back and try to score more points on each puzzle by optimising your solution to use as few moves and little time as possible. We’d be amazed if anyone could rinse Denki Blocks! on iPhone in less than 10 hours of play.
There sure is a whole lot of high-quality puzzlin’ time contained in the latest incarnation of Denki Blocks!
It’s worth remembering that when Denki Blocks! launched in 2001 for Game Boy Advance the retail price was 35 of our Earth pounds. Almost 10 years on we’re able to offer a sizeable and improved chunk of that experience for only £2.99 (or equivalent where you are) through the magic of Apple’s App Store. That’s less than a tenth of the original cost for more than half the original puzzle action. What’s not to like about living in the future, eh?
I’m no mathematician, but I reckon that’s pretty good value for money. But what if you don’t agree?
Well, firstly, I’d suggest not buying it. Seriously; stick with the Free version – there’s over an hour of puzzlin’ fun to be had there already. Take it, have fun with it; no need to feel guilty or anything – it’s on us.
But if you’re wavering, thinking, “Hmm… £2.99 certainly sounds like good value for more than 10 hours of hot puzzle action, but what if those Denki tricksters are just trying to con me? What if all they really want is to grab my hard earned cash and head for the heather covered hills with their Zzap!64 collection and multiple copies of Go! Go! Beckham!?” A reasonable concern, we all agree. So here’s an additional guarantee to assist Denki’s more suspicious clientèle:
Every copy of Denki Blocks! sold on the App Store comes with Denki’s Value For Money Guarantee. If you buy it and don’t believe it represents good value for money then Denki will give the full price you paid to charity. Giving the money back to individuals would be too time consuming for us to administer, but this is better in any case. This way, if you buy the full version of Denki Blocks! and don’t like it, you simply tell us why and Denki passes your money on to a good cause. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?
The process works like this: if you decide Denki Blocks! isn’t worth the money you paid just let us know by sending an email to support@denki.co.uk with the subject line “I Want To Tell You Why Denki Blocks! Sucks!”. One of us will then send through a short questionnaire to make sure a) you’re a real person, b) you’ve actually bought Denki Blocks! and c) we can learn how to make future versions better. Once we’ve verified that you’re a genuinely disgruntled Denki Blocks! customer and not some bizarrely well-intentioned Spambot we’ll drop your donation in the virtual collection tin.
I’ve set up a “Just Giving” page to make sure the whole process is entirely visible and transparent to everyone. I’ve even made the first donation in response to lowgamer’s 1-star review of Denki Blocks! on the App Store. They said, “This game is good on other formats. Does not work on iPhone, very poor.” Obviously I don’t agree with that opinion, and fortunately none of the other reviewers seem to either, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
What’s more disappointing though is that we’ll probably never find out *why* lowgamer thinks Denki Blocks! doesn’t work on iPhone (unless they read this and decide to tell us of course!). And that worries me in case they actually discovered something we don’t know about. We want to improve Denki Blocks! over time and honest criticism often offers the best suggestions.
Bad reviews don’t particularly bother us in and of themselves. They’re an inevitable part of working in creative media, regardless of how popular your creation becomes, so you need to get used to them pretty quick. We see each bad review is an opportunity to learn, and that’s why we want to encourage people to share the reasons behind their Denki Blocks! problems with us. And if we can raise some money for good causes in the process, so much the better.
And no, before you ask, we’re not deducting any administration costs or the like. In fact we’re adding a whole penny on because I hate that deceitful “99p” nonsense. Apple makes us do it on the App Store, but if it was up to us we’d be dealing in whole numbers only. The £2.99 purchase price includes VAT and Apple’s cut, so we actually receive far less than that, but we’ll stick the full £3 in the tin anyway. After all, that’ll teach us to make better games next time – think of it as a swear-box for game development!
Cheers,
Colin.
—