5 fun reasons you should be playing Spire Blast

Spire Blast is one of the best casual games on Apple Arcade. It’s a physics-based match puzzler that involves plenty of fun destruction.

With more than 200 titles on Apple’s gaming service, it’s not easy finding the best. Here are five reasons Spire Blast is worth trying today.

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Why you should play Spire Blast

1. Smashy, smashy

Spire Blast presents you with a tower made of different color blocks, and gives you blocks in those same colors to throw at the tower. Hit a block in the tower with a thrown block of the same color and both will fall. Hit a group of blocks in that color and they’ll all fall down.

Naturally, this destabilizes the building. Remove enough blocks and it collapses. This is very satisfying. Knocking down a tower fulfills some deep, inner need to smash things.

The challenge comes from the limited number of bricks you’re given to throw. You need to be strategic with these or you run out without completely destroying the spire.

The game is a bit like Jenga, except you don’t have to clean up a mess of blocks after every round. Your Apple device will take care of that hassle.

Just to be clear, this is in no way realistic violence. The buildings are so cartoony even animated characters couldn’t live in them. They’re just targets to knock down.

2. So many different game options

Knocking towers down by heaving bricks at them is the simplest version of Spire Blast. The developer, Orbital Knight, added loads of complications to keep the game interesting.

That includes moving Shields, locked blocks that have to be hit multiple times, blocks that change colors and blocks of no color so you can’t smash them directly. One of my favorites is the dragon that needs to be fed blocks. You do this by collapsing the spire on top of her — something she enjoys.

Beyond colored bricks to heave at the tower, you’re given missiles, potions that remove every block of a certain color, as well as other implements of destruction.

Orbital Knight also adds special events throughout the year that give players the opportunity to play additional variations of the game.

3. Spire Blast stays interesting by getting more challenging

If you play a traditional game like Solitaire, the last hand you play is as hard as the first one. That’s not true for Spire Blast. It keeps changing and getting harder.

It starts out easy, but that’s just to teach you how to play. (Or perhaps make you overconfident.) It soon gets tougher.

I already mentioned the different options. The fiends at Orbital Knight not only mix these up, the game keeps piling them on. After you’ve progressed through the game, you have to knock down a tower with five or six different types of complications using a very limited number of blocks t throw.

This keeps the game interesting. As time goes on, you’ll get better and better at playing it, so towers have to get harder of they become boring.

Don’t expect to successful complete each level the first time. That’s especially true as you get into the higher, more difficult levels.

That said, Spire Blast also lets you go back to easier towers at any time if you’re just in the mood to knock down a few buildings without an epic struggle. The blocks are arranged differently every time, so there’s a lot of replayability.

4. It’s quick to play

If you have a few minutes to kill, you can pull out your iPhone and blast a few spires. Starting play doesn’t commit you to continuing until you reach a save point.

That’s what you want in a casual game. Play for five minutes or five hours — whatever you’re in the mood for.

I like playing during commercial breaks in TV shows. A round of the game takes about the same amount of time as a few adverts, whether you win or lose.

Keep in mind, when I say “it’s quick to play,” I only mean each level. There are literally hundreds of challenging levels to go through. And Orbital Knight periodically adds new levels to enjoy. You won’t finish the whole game quickly.

5. No pesky in-app purchases

There are plenty of other color-matching puzzlers available for “free” but with in-app purchases required to make the game fun. Not this one.

Spire Blast is part of Apple Arcade, and this service forbids such tricks. You don’t ever have to purchase gems or some other BS to have fun. This ought to reassure parents whose kids play the game. There are no hidden costs.

If you’re into cute as well as explosions, the game does include a way to dress up the dragon, but you don’t use real money to buy the outfits. You earn the credits by playing the game.

Play Spire Blast on Apple Arcade today

Spire Blast can be downloaded now from the App Store. There are versions for a variety of Apple computers. The iPhone and iPad ones are portrait-only, while the Mac and Apple TV versions are landscape-only. All support external game controllers.

Playing requires a subscription to Apple Arcade, which costs $4.99 per month. But that same fee also brings access to over 200 other games. Some are available only on this service, others are classics that have been around for a while.