Recently, the mobile game Block Blast has become a viral phenomenon, and Camas High School (CHS) students have caught on.

Similar to Tetris, the goal of the game is to put different colors and shapes of blocks into the space and to clear out rows of blocks to earn points. When there’s no more space left to fit the given blocks, the round is over. 

The game picked up popularity on the internet around November, which is around the same time a lot of CHS students began to pick it up too.

“[I’ve been playing] like a month, two months? Not that long, I kind of hopped on the bandwagon,” CHS junior Cadence Maxwell said.

Along with its popularity, other factors such as advertising only supplemented the spread of the game. 

“[I started] probably when it got viral on TikTok. I thought it was not fun but then I kept getting ads and I gave in,” sophomore Piper Clark said.

Even some CHS staff members have observed the trend. English teacher Joe Farland saw his teenage sons playing it and decided to take a stab at it himself.

“Honestly I saw it and I was like ‘oh, that’s bright and colorful’ and I asked if it was like Tetris because I played Tetris when I was in like 8th grade,” Farland said. “I really did enjoy Tetris when I was younger.”

Nostalgia may be what hooked some people in, but the aspect of earning points has been bringing people back to the game over and over again. The game records and displays a high score on the screen, giving players no choice but to try and beat it.

“I really want to get a high score so I can beat everybody that I know, so I can be better than them,” Maxwell said.

While some players get competitive with their friends, others just get competitive with themselves.

“I got into a cycle where I had to nonstop beat my high score,” sophomore Lachlan Morris said. “I was playing during class, during free time, in the car, just any time I wasn’t actively doing something that I needed to lock in on.”

However, despite the game’s addictive nature, students have reported they are able to find a good balance.

“I play it a lot at school and at home. I mostly play it during downtime, it’s not like I play it when I’m supposed to be doing homework,” Maxwell said.

Farland also shared similar sentiments based on his observations from a teacher’s perspective.

“I don’t have too many phone distractions,” Farland said. “I think most people in our class kind of understand to just put it away.”

Block Blast may be a technically simple game, but the competitive challenge it presents has garnered widespread appeal.