Iceblox

Development

Iceblox was developed by Karl Hörnell who wished to expand his Java skills by programming his first arcade game. He specifically did not want to write another remake of famous arcade games such as Pacman or Space Invaders, as these games already had numerous Java remakes, and, in Hörnell's opinion, were rather primitive and not very fun. Instead, he chose to create a variant of Pengo, a game from an era "when people started expecting more of computer games". Another reason to choose Pengo was that the game would be block-oriented, making up for the low speed of Java's graphic routines which made keyboard controls unsuitable for precise movement.

At the time of creating Iceblox, Hörnell had not played Pengo for over a decade and had only faded memories of its rules, so Iceblox's gameplay has only superficial similarities to Pengo's.