🌆 GRIDLOCK v0.0.2: A Neon Block Puzzle That Chains the Lights (Windows & Linux!)

The grid is dark. The pieces are glowing. And you have exactly enough room — if you play it right. 🌃

Meet GRIDLOCK, a polished, full-screen neon block puzzle built with Godot 4.7. Drag three glowing pieces onto a 10×10 board, complete rows and columns to clear them, and chain your clears for combo bonuses. The run ends when none of the remaining pieces fit — gridlock. 🧩

And today it’s shipping: v0.0.2 is out on Windows and Linux. 🎉

📦 Get It Now

🔗 GitHub Repo: https://github.com/0xRavenBlack/gridlock 🏷️ Latest Release: v0.0.2 (Oct 10, 2026) — Windows & Linux builds 🧪 Verified: 128/128 automated checks passing

Download Links:

• gridlock-0.0.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz 🐧
• gridlock-0.0.2-windows-x86_64.zip 🪟

Each package contains the game binary, its .pck data file and the README. Keep the binary and the .pck together — the game loads its data from the adjacent pack file.

✨ Why It Glows

GRIDLOCK is a love letter to the classic 1010! formula, rebuilt from scratch with a smooth neon/glossy identity. The wild part? It ships with no .png, no .wav, and no font files at all — every pixel is drawn from code and every sound is synthesized as 16-bit PCM at startup. 🎛️

• Smooth neon / glossy UI — built entirely from theme style boxes and a custom animated background shader, no bitmap art required.
• “Almost” line hints — any row or column one cell short of clearing pulses the board frame and pins the exact missing cell, so you can plan the chain.
• Juicy clears — a light beam sweeps each cleared line, tiles flash and pop, sparks burst, the screen shakes, the score floats, and tiered DOUBLE / TRIPLE / MEGA banners celebrate the damage.
• Chain the lights — clear on consecutive moves to grow a streak; a single clear can cascade into multi-line bonuses.
• Procedural audio — generated tones and a soft chill-out music bed (a warm detuned pad, sub-bass and a drifting bell melody). Zero binary audio assets.
• Lifetime stats — games played, lines cleared, blocks placed and best streak persist and appear on the game-over card.
• Full-screen by default with a persistent toggle (F11), plus separate sound and music volume.
• Deterministic, fully tested rules with a weighted shuffle bag so piece droughts are rare.

🎯 How to Play

1. Pick up a piece from the tray at the bottom.
2. Drop it on empty cells. Glowing previews show whether the placement is legal (cyan = valid, red = invalid).
3. Fill an entire row or column to clear it and score. A pulsing frame and a pinned dot reveal lines that are one cell from clearing.
4. Clear multiple lines at once for a multiline bonus; clear on consecutive moves for a streak bonus.
5. The game ends when no remaining piece can be placed — gridlock.

🏆 Scoring

score = 100 × lines × (1 + 0.5 × (lines − 1)) × (1 + 0.25 × (streak − 1))

A move that clears nothing resets the streak. Simple to learn, brutal to master. 💜

🎮 Controls

🚀 Running It

Linux

tar xzf gridlock-0.0.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd gridlock-0.0.2-linux-x86_64
./gridlock_x86_64_linux

Windows

Unzip gridlock-0.0.2-windows-x86_64.zip and run gridlock_x86_64_windows.exe.

Requirements: 64-bit Linux/X11 or Windows with an OpenGL 3.3+ / Vulkan-capable GPU. Built with Godot 4.7.2.

🏗️ Built the Hard Way

Under the neon there’s a strict separation between rules and presentation — the single most important convention in the repo:

• GameRules owns the grid, tray, scoring, near-complete hints and game-over detection. It’s pure logic — no nodes, no input, no rendering — which means it’s fully unit-testable headlessly.
• Game (autoload) holds the current rules plus persisted best score and lifetime stats.
• The scene controller reads input, calls the rules, and renders the returned result (beams, banners, sparks, hints). It holds no rules of its own.

That discipline pays off in the test suite: 105 assertions over the core rules plus 23 headless integration checks that boot the real game and drive a full drag from tray to board. 128 checks, all passing. ✅

🔗 Dive into the Grid

Want to run it from source, dig into the architecture, or build your own release? Everything lives here:

GitHub — 0xRavenBlack/gridlock: GRIDLOCK — Chain the Lights

Download it, chase the streaks, and let the grid lock you in. 🌌🖤