I've always enjoyed the games that have come from the students of DigiPen Institute of Technology, and this game is no exception. It is brimming with ingenuity and yet is incredibly simple.

The premise of the game is that you are a man made of blocks in an arena with no exit. You must defeat your enemies and use the components of their bodies to build piles large enough to reach the top of the arena walls. Enemies spawn frequently and in great numbers which greatly helps you towards completing this task. You start with health, and each time you collapse you lose one ball of health. You lose when your health counter reaches zero.

The controls are similar to your standard brawler game. You have a button for attacking and a button for grabbing; Press attack while grabbing an opponent to swing them around before tossing them, hitting other enemies. The attack button normally automatically aims you towards the nearest enemy. You can double-tap a direction key to dash in a direction. This is incredibly useful in escaping particularly annoying enemies. Dashing can also be combined with attacking for a flying-attack that appears to be similar to a body slam.

The enemies are your standard brawler archetypes. Some stand around and do nothing, just waiting for you to lop their heads off, while some are incredibly aggressive. Some enemies, however, have bombs for heads and as soon as they fall to the ground they begin counting down to an explosion. You do NOT want to be anywhere near these bombs when they explode as they will take you down along with any enemies near you.

After each stage you get a chance to tackle a bonus stage. Each bonus stage is quirky; A common bonus stage involves bombs falling from the sky. Another common stage involves taking down a certain number of enemies within a time limit. These are all quite interesting and fun.

The game also includes a "challenge mode" which is basically the main game except with added difficulty. Enemies spawn faster, bombs sometimes fall from the sky, and other ridiculously annoying things happen during the course of a stage. It is more fun than the normal mode, if only because it is more frantic and will make you laugh much more.

The music, however, is absolutely horrendous. It is not bad at first, but after about a minute it begins to loop the same annoying sound loop.

My only other complaint with the game is that after a point it gets quite difficult to tell what is an enemy and what is the player. This isn't really debilitating at all, though, as hitting space will still kill something.

You may have to set the EXE's compatibility if playing in Vista.

Rumble Box is an absolutely great game that deserves at least SOME of your attention. Get it. Now.