Students can be seen everywhere from the Field House to the senior hallway playing the popular mobile game Block Blast. Though Block Blast was first released in April 2022, the game began topping the charts in October 2024, spreading quickly throughout the nation. The game became particularly widespread in high schools, with students competing with one another to earn high scores. In fact, there is even a student-run Instagram account dedicated to posting scores and jokes derived from the game at MFS: @blockblastmfs.
Block Blast is somewhat of a derivation from the long-famous game of Tetris. In Block Blast, groups of blocks of a certain color drop into a grid, where players swipe in an attempt to fill rows and columns of blocks; successfully doing this ensures that the blocks “blast” away, and give points towards a player’s score. However, if the falling blocks are not sorted into complete rows and columns and the amount of blocks on the grid continues to increase such that no further moves are possible, the game will be over. Although placing the blocks seems random at the beginning of a round, there is an element of strategy present that players can take advantage of.
Students in the MFS community have considered the role of Block Blast in their daily lives, and where the game came from in the first place. Some students have even memorized their scores, striving to go above and beyond their most recent records.
Andrew Zhou ’25 said “My high score is around 75,000. A bunch of people around me started picking up Block Blast, and over the weekend, I was like, I’ll try it out. I downloaded it and I got really into it. Preston Galanis [’25] really helped me master my skills.”
The sentiment that many people suddenly started playing was shared by other students. This increase in gameplay began in October and November but has continued to grow strong, with no signs of the game disappearing from popularity. Ethan Cohen ’26 said, “I’m not exactly sure how it [the popularity of Block Blast] started, but one week it just seemed like everyone was playing it.” As one of the managers of @blockblastmfs, Cohen continues to stay up to date on the current standings for student scores, highlighting that Kieran Ning ’27 currently holds the highest score in the MFS community, followed by Preston Galanis ’25.
Major organizations like Forbes have described Block Blast as addictive, citing the bright color sequences and ability to earn a personal score as factors that contribute to the difficulty that players experience when needing to put the game down. Zhou reflected, saying “I think “addictive” has a negative connotation, right. [Block Blast] is more enlightening, I think. It provides a source of relief and is meditative, almost.”
As Block Blast has already demonstrated a remarkable ability to captivate the high school audience, the question of the app’s future stands. Zhou remarked that “the future of the game is only up. That’s how it is.”
