Free Games I Like: Rumble Box

It’s an arena-based beat-em-up with mini-games, but it’s also a stunningly pretty and deceptively clever abstract punchathon. It’s fairly old mind you, and came to my attention back in 2006 when it was a finalist in the IGF Innovation in Game Design category.

It’s Rumble Box.

The concept is simple – you are a man made of blocks, in a box, fighting other men made of blocks… in a box. The only way to escape and transcend to the next level is to kill enough enemies that their corpses pile up high enough to enable you to climb over the wall into the next area. It’d be gruesome if it weren’t for the lego-like visuals.
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There’s not really much to it other than that – you kill things, walk over their corpses and there’s a slight tactical edge to the harder levels when it comes to killing people in one corner, allowing you to climb up and over the wall quicker. There are bonus levels too, where you have to avoid bombs or kill people with bombs and so on to get extra points.

Rumble Box isn’t an incredibly deep game, but it is a fun one. If you like beat-em-ups or just have a passionate hatred for things that look a bit like Lego then you might like this. Either way, it’s a free download and it’s really fun to play. The screenshots make it look a bit confused, but in actual fact it’s really easy to get stuck into.