40 Fun Facts About Fractal Block World

Infiniminer, made by Zach Barth after working with Fractal Block World's developer, inspired which hit block game?

Minecraft took its blocky look from Infiniminer, which Barth built after abandoning Infinifrag 2, the shooter both men had worked on in college.

What does Fractal Block World's creator say pushed him, around 2012, to commit to coding the game?

A dream of drifting through one of the game's areas, growing ever smaller, had him waking up determined to build it.

At certain locations in Fractal Block World, what can a player do to travel deeper into the fractal?

Shrink enough times and a player becomes extremely small: the store page says shrinking 100 times over is easy, and other spots make the player larger again.

Which old-fashioned tools does Fractal Block World's store page recommend for mapping out its world?

Pencil and paper are advised because the main quest winds through mazes, scavenger hunts and hordes of monsters.

Which difficulty setting in Fractal Block World is represented by a picture of a bunny?

Tranquility wears the bunny, while Normal gets a purple cat and Gateway a bridge; every setting harder than Normal needs a password.

Pressing T in Fractal Block World triggers which power, gathering every visible item within a certain radius?

Telekinesis is bound to T by default, though every control in the game can be rebound from the options menu.

According to Fractal Block World's own store description, how does the player move through its world?

Flying uses Space to rise and Left Shift to sink, and a rocket mode cuts drag for faster travel.

Which weapon is the only one a player can use at the very start of Fractal Block World?

The plasma gun is also the only weapon whose ammo regenerates by itself; each of the other nine unlocks with its first upgrade.

Which material names the strongest armor pickup in Fractal Block World, filling armor to its maximum?

Jade armor fills the gauge to tenfold a player's basic health, and the manual itself calls it sick.

In what kind of area, one the player must work out how to leave, does Fractal Block World begin?

A forest whose trees can be explored from the inside is the starting area, and only beyond it do the procedurally generated regions open up.

Who is credited on Steam as the developer of Fractal Block World, having written its engine himself?

Dan Hathaway worked on the engine for years before a first public demo in 2018, with a small team supplying artwork and ideas.

Fractal Block World first went on sale in June 2021 under which Steam program?

Early Access lasted four months: combat arrived that August, and the full release followed in October 2021.

Finding an Inner Core deep in inner space completes which main quest in Fractal Block World?

Rescuing a friend is the stated goal, though the store page stresses that where to go along the way is up to the player.

Besides gold, which collectibles does Fractal Block World scatter through its world for players to find?

Trophies grew in number for the full release, and pressing F5 lists every one a player has collected.

Which of a Fractal Block World player's defenses absorbs all incoming damage until it is completely empty?

Shield recharges by itself, and only once it is drained do hits start eating into armor and health.

Sell stations in Fractal Block World come in three colors; which color is the rarest and pays best?

Green sell stations are rare and pay the best prices, while the common red ones pay the worst; players can even sell surplus health there.

What can a player drop in Fractal Block World, at a cost in gold, to avoid getting lost?

A marker comes in two kinds: a short one that fades after three hours and a long one that stays forever and can hold a note.

Which key opens the command console in Fractal Block World, where cheats and commands are typed?

Tilde opens a console the developer wrote from scratch, with commands shaped like Lisp-style S-expressions.

Which console cheat in Fractal Block World toggles the ability to move through walls?

noclip works only after the secret cheat password is entered, and the manual warns that cheating can spoil a first playthrough.

Fractal Block World's manual says the cheat-code password comes from which subject, its developer's research field?

Mathematics is the developer's profession, with teaching and research listed on his site, and clues to the password are hidden in the game's world.

Which 1995 game with six degrees of freedom does Fractal Block World's developer list among its influences?

Descent is the comparison game designer Frank Lantz reached for too, pointing to the free movement in every direction and the swarms of hostile enemies.

In which programming language did its developer write the engine and game code of Fractal Block World?

C++ here is built with the MinGW compiler, which the developer switched to in 2022 for better performance.

Which scripting language do modders use to build custom worlds and packages for Fractal Block World?

Lua scripts can generate whole worlds, and newcomers are told to start by copying the blank package that ships with the game.

Which Fractal Block World weapon has a Vampire mode that returns a quarter of its damage as health?

The railgun in Vampire mode hits half as hard as usual, yet the manual says that in some areas a player may want to use it constantly.

The minigun's secondary fire in Fractal Block World does no impact damage; what effect does it deliver instead?

Poison from one secondary shot lasts 10 seconds and deals as much damage as 20 primary shots.

Which Fractal Block World weapon mode hurts its own user, dealing the player 50 damage with every shot?

Laser Disco costs eight ammo a shot, and a kill with it sends ice beams at every nearby monster of the same size.

Which cannon mode in Fractal Block World fires only once every five seconds but hits the hardest?

The Judge deals a hundredfold the damage of the starting Blunderbuss, and its ball chains on to the next enemy after a kill.

Which Fractal Block World mode strips out every weapon and monster, leaving pure exploration?

Genesis was the only version sold when the game first reached Steam, because engine problems had forced the combat out.

Which classic fractal shape forms a whole area of Fractal Block World, with hidden towns 100 levels down?

Menger sponge areas, built on a cube bored through with ever-smaller holes, were expanded in 2022 with monsters that toughen the deeper a player goes.

Which rank names the strongest monster in Fractal Block World's Pirate class?

Captain has 31,000 hit points, and like every pirate it drops a huge box of homing rocket ammo.

The instantly lethal Pool Ball monsters of Fractal Block World pay homage to which 1993 game?

Ken's Labyrinth had an Eight Ball enemy; here the pool balls chase the player, and the higher the number, the faster they roll.

Which Fractal Block World creature does the monster manual call a symbol of peace whose death kills the player?

Infinity Wolf deals no damage at all, yet its 31,000 hit points mean that killing one takes real effort.

Which Fractal Block World monsters strike the player blind whenever they have the player in sight?

Yin Yangs deal no damage themselves, and one variety also shrugs off the EMP.

Which Fractal Block World monster class can only hurt players who are smaller than the monster itself?

Beholder monsters also take little damage from a player of their own size, and the biggest of them drops 100 gold.

In Fractal Block World, what runs more slowly on the coarser, larger-scale levels of the fractal?

Time was slowed partly so that an enemy rocket could spawn ever-smaller rockets to chase a player who had scaled down, an idea that never quite worked.

Early versions of Fractal Block World used just one block texture throughout; which texture was it?

Grey concrete blocks were only tinted by depth, and the developer added more textures after getting lost in his own game.

Zach Barth's question about adding which rendering feature to a block game led to Fractal Block World?

Level of detail seemed pointless for blocks at first, but the question stuck, and the game's nested chunks became one answer to it.

Which action-film hero lends his name to the custom memory pointers in Fractal Block World's code?

John Wick pointers must release their memory when finished or the program exits with a leak error, the developer's joke about the character.

Which classic puzzle game did Fractal Block World's developer also remake as a version played in 3D space?

Minesweeper sits beside this game on his site, where the 3D version is played by left- and right-clicking on blocks.

Which Fractal Block World monster class is meant to be frozen with the laser and run past, not fought?

Sliver monsters arrived in a 2022 update; they ignore the EMP, and a Major Sliver deals 10,000 damage per second.