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Published: November 24, 2009
Piyo Blocks is a match 3 game featuring some really cool retro styled Piyos. I guess a Piyo is a kind of bird because a yellow one flies about on the main screen, but I don’t know why they have turned into blocks. There is really no need to know either, but I have a curious nature and I don’t know if the Piyos chirp out of happiness or sadness.
By swiping you swap places between blocks creating matches of three Piyos or more. You can continue combos by making new quick matches which is not the common way match 3 games handle. I find this to be a really neat feature as I don’t have to plan so far ahead but can play more like an arcade game. 
The Piyos come in a variety of colours, and beside the Piyos you also get to combine donuts that come into play further on.
Piyo Blocks feature three different game modes: Piyo mode where you have to capture a certain number of Piyos to reach the next level, Hyaku mode where you have to capture 99 of any Piyo to progress and finally the time attack where you have four minutes total playtime to capture as many Piyos as possible.
I like the basic match 3 mechanic of Piyo Blocks but I found all game modes to be somewhat lacking. As all are timed it becomes a game of speed instead of solving puzzles. I would have liked some sort of balance or at least a more puzzle based game mode included in the game. You can resume any game if you quit out of the game, and as both the Piyo and Hyaku modes take quite a while to finish that is a necessary feature.
The graphics in Piyo Blocks is all retro styled with bright colours and jagged pixelated edges. I enjoy the graphics, but it does get a bit old after a while. Only using colour to tell the different Piyos apart is not enough for longer sessions. At least not for me, and I have full colour vision. If you are colour blind this game is really hard t
o play.
The music is cool chip tune music with a definite happy, and dare I say Piyo chirpy feel to it. Sound effects are ok with the odd sound as you make matches. You can play your own music, and keep the sound effects as well.
The latest update added OpenFeint integration that really lifted the game. Achievements and online leaderboards add gamelife. There are also cheats to discover, and reports say that there is an extra game mode to discover as well. Facebook and Twitter shout outs are also available.
Piyo Blocks is an arcade match 3 game lacking in depth, and instead making up for it in happy speed matching. The online functionality add a lot of gamelife, and at $0.99 Piyo Blocks is definitely worth getting.
Final Rating
Piyo Blocks $0.99
Version: 1.2
Seller: Big Pixel Studios
Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here
2 Comments on "Piyo Blocks review"
Tim on Tue, 24th Nov 2009 7:59 pm
“There is really no need to know either, but I have a curious nature and I don’t know if the Piyos chirp out of happiness or sadness.”
This made me laugh out loud for some reason. You write the best reviews for iPhone games on the web.
Argonomic on Mon, 30th Nov 2009 10:23 am
I wish they would clone Tetris Attack instead of Bejeweled. Tetris Attack with “scroll” enabled on the Gameboy Pro let you do combos for as long as your brain could hold out.
Nothing I’ve found in the world of combo matching games has come close (closest was Puzzle Fighter or Puyo Puyo).