"Blocks That Matter" may be a slight misrepresentation.
Game design - or at least, good game design - is tricky. I'm no designer; I've never made a game myself. But I have played hundreds of them, good and otherwise, and I have been able to pick up on some patterns that work, and some that don't. To wit: when a game world is unreal or fantastical in some way, it is the job of the game's mechanics to make sense of those departures from reality -- to overcome high obstacles with a powerful jump, to conquer faraway enemies with a ranged attack, to deflect magic with a magic shield, and so on. To me, the fundamental failure of Blocks That Matter - and to be fair, what also makes it creatively interesting - is that its mechanics only add to its eccentricity. As new mechanics are unlocked, the game doesn't just become more nuanced and challenging, it also becomes more confusing and obtuse.
To begin with, your character can destroy certain blocks, by drilling into or jumping under them, and then place these blocks in the environment to reach new areas. If this sounds like Minecraft: Java Edition (and it probably isn't a coincidence that the block types are modeled after the types in Minecraft), then you'll be surprised to learn that you can only place blocks in tetrominoes -- that is, four at a time in a contiguous shape; although you can then proceed to break individual blocks out of this four. Furthermore, certain block types obey gravity and certain types don't (again, hello Minecraft), but these categories seem totally arbitrary: stone and wood can float in mid-air, but sand and obsidian fall if nothing is supporting them.
The last level I played introduced a mechanic where you can destroy eight (not four) blocks in a line, anywhere on the screen, but you won't recover the blocks -- they're destroyed, due to the law of "non-preservation" of matter, per the game's narration. But the mechanic that made me emit an audible "wut" was, uh, running. Yeah, you can run, and in so doing cross large gaps with a running jump. But there's no dedicated run button; while drilling, you are also running. Why are these two, completely distinct functions, simultaneous with one another? It's just so peculiar.
I don't know that I've ever given up on a game for this reason before, but Blocks That Matter is simply too illogical for me. It's not hard to play, but it's hard to understand; I guess it would be fair to say that I don't "get" it. And I don't have any reason to believe that I can "get" it through continued play. For me, Blocks That Matter is the antithesis of good game design - I'm effectively getting worse at the game the more I play it - and I have no interest in delving deeper into this rabbit hole.
Progress: 7%