? Block

? Block, the Cuboid of Curiosity, is a love letter to all things block shaped throughout the Super Mario universe (and even a little bit outside of it), 100% jam-packed with references galore, ranging from the obvious to the obscure – see how many you can spot!
Gameplay-wise, they’re a sort of setplay zoner with solid combo normals and a variety of classic Mario enemies as mobile hazards. Their recovery can be tricky to learn and their stage control can be a bit inconsistent, but weaving their bag of tricks into your combo game turns ? Block into a powerhouse once they gain advantage!

Using Neutral Special, you can summon a few different Mario enemies as stage hazards! For all but one of these little guys, they’ll walk across the stage and can be jumped on for a height boost. They also have interactions with ? Block’s other specials, changing their properties, transforming them into recovery options, and even being able to store them for later use! These enemies include…

The most basic and straightforward of the enemies, acting as a simple projectile. Depending on what direction they’re thrown in, the launch angle of the fish changes, and their low knockback scaling makes them a fairly reliable combo tool. However, Cheep Cheep is also the least interactive enemy after they’ve been thrown, as it despawns on contact with the ground, can’t be jumped on, and doesn’t interact with Up Special like other enemies do.

The most vertically-oriented member of the enemy squad. Hitting an opponent into one bounces them straight up, squishing the Goomba in the process. They also give a significantly bigger height boost when jumped on, and their knockback when thrown sends the opponent upwards.

Stomping on a… KOOPAS, causes it to hide in its shell, then attacking it sends the turtle spinning along the ground at high speeds, bouncing off of opponents on hit! It also has the strongest throw hitbox out of all of the enemies, being the same as its shell attack in frame data. Keep in mind that the opponent can also hit your Koopa to launch the shell back at you.

Similar to the Goomba, throwing a Bob-Omb at an opponent launches them straight up. Jumping on or hitting the Bob-Omb causes it to go immobile, charging up a deadly explosion after a short delay. Whoever last hit the bomb becomes immune to its explosion, so make sure the opponent doesn’t have a chance to defuse this lethal weapon!

Most of ? Block’s normals are pretty, well, normal. Their kit is designed to be pretty simple and intuitive, but a few moves have some extra sauce that might be worth knowing about…

– Forward Tilt applies random effects with every hit to simulate the gamble-y nature of Lucky Blocks. Most of these are simple damage/knockback boosts or status effects, but on rare occasions, you can get either all of the effects at once, or absolutely nothing.
– Up Tilt‘s sweetspot (the coin) does less damage and knockback than its sourspot, allowing the move to combo into itself up to extremely high percents.
– Down Tilt forces a pipe into the ground that pops up a short distance away from ? Block. This distance gets cut off by the edge of platforms, meaning it won’t go offstage.
– Forward Strong‘s fire bar gains additional fireballs as you charge it up, greatly increasing the attack’s range!
– Up Air boosts ? Block’s vertical speed as you hold down the Attack button, similar to Maypul.
– Down Air can be cancelled VERY early for a stall n’ fall, but never spikes.

Remember those enemies from earlier? Well…

…This is how you bring them into battle! Holding Special and a direction selects an enemy type, spawning them on top of your head (tapping Special spawns whatever you last had selected). You can move around and jump while holding an enemy, but your dash gets cut short until you throw them. Enemies can be thrown Neutral, Forward/Backward, Up, or Down, and you can’t use any of your normals until you throw them. As for your specials, Forward and Down Special have unique interactions while holding an enemy, which get explained below!

? Block throws out a winged coin, which acts as a slow moving basic projectile with weak knockback, perfect for combo extensions. While this move seems basic at first, you can also add wings to your enemy squad, either while holding them after Neutral Special, or by using Forward Special on top of them! Winged enemies have their own unique properties that separate them from normal enemies; try to experiment with each of them!

An omnidirectional tether attack that summons a vine, reaching a far distance until it comes into contact with an opponent, enemy, or the ground, then launching ? Block towards it. Since the tether’s endlag is low and you don’t go into pratfall after using it, Up Special can act as a niche but rewarding combo extension! Keep in mind that, unless you hit the opponent or burn your wall jump, you only get one tether per airtime, so use it wisely!

Holding Down Special surrounds ? Block with a Powerup HUD, absorbing the first projectile that touches it. The projectile is converted into a Starman powerup, which bounces around the stage and gives ? Block a speed and weight boost when touched! The length of the star power depends on the damage of the projectile that got absorbed, so the bigger the bullet, the longer the install! You can also use Down Special with one of your enemies (including winged ones!) to store them and drop them on unsuspecting opponents later!

I wanna end things off by giving shout-outs to…

DarkDakurai for helping fix the article code while it was in development (programming isn’t my strong suit, so it really meant a lot ;w;)
TheMegaNintenbro for playtesting the character with me a bunch ^^
Flophawk for hosting the RoA (from Mario) Jam! I ultimately couldn’t participate for various reasons, but the jam itself gave me the inspiration and motivation to make this goober 😀
Alexalchemy (& the Fraud Krew) for being some of the coolest people I know who I hold dear <3
The 20-or-so people who downloaded this character when I randomly dumped them in the FGC Jam channel almost a year ago lol
YOU for playing my silly goober character(s) c:

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