Because trope names may not be tagged, along with the unique nature of this Puzzle Game, there may be unavoidable spoilers below. Trope descriptions may still be marked, though.
- Blackbox |'ˌblæk 'baks|
noun
1. any complex system with unknown internal functions or mechanisms
2. a game that redefines frustration
is a mobile puzzle game developed by Grow Pixel. Its puzzles require interactions with different features of players' hardware and software, as opposed to tapping and swiping your screen in certain ways all the time.The objective of each of the game's 81 challenges is to illuminate a certain square-shaped light using a certain forementioned interaction, with the colorful shapes on your screen being your only clues (aside from the Hint System).
The game is under development to this day, with new challenges arriving on occasion.
You can download the game on the iOS App Store.
Blackbox provides examples of:
- Allegedly Free Game: The game can be played free of charge, with the exception of the "Basic Pack" that is required to access all of the challenges.
- Anti-Frustration Features: All location-based challenges were temporarily made easier during the early COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Arc Symbol: Squares, often black ones. Each light is shaped like a rounded one.
- Arc Words: "Blackbox". The first definition of the word is a decent description for the puzzles.
- Bizarre Puzzle Game: The extensive lack of convention within the puzzles surmounts to this.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Hint credits can be purchased for real money. However, it is possible (and more fulfilling) to beat the game without the use of any additional hints.
- Clock Tampering: The game is affected by manual (and undetected) changes to your device's clock.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Each set of challenges has its own color. This becomes important in two turquoise challenges, where hints of the same color and hints of different colors must be selected.
- Hint System: Hint credits can be spent on additional tips, but their use is wholly optional.
- Holiday Mode:
- During the holidays, the leftmost red challenge creates a unique snowflake when solved.
- During the Halloween season, the two rightmost orange challenges are changed to depict jaws clamping down.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: Practically all of the game's challenges makes little sense outside hindsight.
-
Nintendo Hard: The game's defining feature is just how immensely unintuitive (yet genuinely clever) almost every solution is. - No Fair Cheating: Certain challenges do not work if the game notices manual manipulation of your device's internal clock.
- Non-Indicative Name: So-called "meta challenges" (whose lights consist of two differently sized rounded squares) are not the only ones that utilize heavy Paradiegetic Gameplay.
- One-Word Title: A compound-word-type Portmantitle, referencing the unclear mechanics.
- Paradiegetic Gameplay: Due to the sheer number of different tools of a mobile device that are required.
- Scaling the Summit: The three highest turquoise challenges require you to travel to various different altitudes.
- Stealth Pun: One hint states that you have the power to solve a certain challenge all by yourself.
- Waiting Puzzle: Several tricky ones exist. Some can be circumvented by going offline and repeatedly setting the internal clock and rebooting the game, but others cannot.
