Meta Swing Blocks

Meta Swing Blocks was originally a game I released in China back in 2019, under the name 《摇摆积木超增量版》（Swing Blocks: Hyper Incremental Edition）.

At the time, I poured an incredible amount of time into it. When it first launched, it even enjoyed a brief period of popularity. But as things often go, life got in the way, and the momentum faded.

One of the most pioneering aspects of the game was probably its built-in level editor and sharing system. Many players were deeply engaged in creating and uploading their own levels thanks to this feature.

If I start talking about the tech behind those systems, I’ll probably go on forever—this isn’t the first time I’ve introduced the game that way.

But truth be told, the technology I used back then had serious issues. I often misjudged the scale of the project, or chose overly complex tools to solve relatively simple problems.

The standalone MySQL database and cloud server cost several hundred RMB per month. After a year—once the player base dwindled—I shut the servers down.

Later, I mistakenly believed that the artistic vision of the game was its true essence. But what really kept people engaged was probably the joy of rating others’ levels or seeing their own creations receive high scores.

Over the following years, I sporadically updated a version of Swing Blocks without the online features. But it never quite matched the charm or popularity of the original.

I guess the history of this game has come to a close. Nearly a year of development can be labeled a failure.

As a final release, I’ve restored the old data and backend services.

To ensure long-term availability, the backend now runs on Cloudflare Workers, and the game assets are hosted on Cloudflare Pages.

You can now play the game on itch.io. Whether it remains unnoticed or eventually gets discovered—it doesn’t really matter to me anymore.

Maybe it’s time to let go of the obsession with failure, and go make something even more fun.