Build 19 is the biggest update since launch. It started with two notes from Eli, who plays more O'BLOCK than anyone: clicking your angles should open your angles, and he flips deadstock, so he needs to see the condition before he deals. Both are fixed. Then we kept going.
THE CRIB: your home, your collection, your money
Press O on the street to go home. Where you live follows what you own: the apartment at Parkway Gardenz, then the condo, the mansion and the island. Every room has walls for art, plinths for objects and bays for cars, and you're standing in it.
- Seven kinds of collectibles: art, cars, watches, sculptures, jewellery, one-of-one sneakers and graded cards.
- Every piece is made for your run and nowhere else. Paintings are generated in eight styles, each signed by the artist whose style it is. Cars, watches, sculptures and jewellery are built from their own seed, so the body colour, the wheels, the dial, the stone are yours alone. One-of-one pairs come in inks nobody else has.
- Prices scale with what you're worth. A first-week run sees prints and street art. A run worth five trillion meets a five-billion-dollar watch.
- Pick anything up to look at it and turn it in your hands, move it to another wall or plinth, or sell it. Values drift every night, so a collection can be a play.
- Your collection counts toward your worth and your status.
THE GALLERY
Press G in your home. Six one-offs every week. You buy them the way you buy everything in O'BLOCK: you name a price. Lowball and the gallery comes down toward you. Lowball three times and another collector takes it.
THE MONEY ROOM
Your cash, stacked at true size in $100 bills, with you standing next to it at 1.8 m. A million is a cube about 22 cm on a side. Two hundred and fifty million is a wall up to your waist. Five trillion is a 34 m tower and you are a speck at the bottom of it.
THE LOUPE: inspect before you buy
The condition on a box sticker is now what the seller says it is. Most people are honest. Some dress a pair up a grade, and the people with the violet pins do it twice as often.
- Press I on any buy to pick the pair up. Wear shows on the 3D pair: creases across the toe box, a dragged heel, scuffed or yellowed soles, a frayed collar. Fake tells show on it too.
- Rest the loupe on a flaw and it gets circled and labelled. Catch a lie and their number drops to what the pair really is, and a bit more for getting caught.
- Skip the loupe and you find out when it's on your shelf.
BLIND BOXES
THE BOX MAN walks the block with sealed cases: 3 boxes on the block, up to 48 at the top. The odds are printed on the sticker. You haggle for the case like anything else (it's priced on the odds, so a good read still wins), then you rip it one box at a time: it shakes, the tape tears, the lid flips and the pair comes up in a light the colour of what it is. Retail, Sample, Player Exclusive, Autographed, Game-Worn, One of One. Space rips the whole case. Violet-taped cases double the grail odds, and the fakes.
THE SPOT: your shop
New moves: FOLDING TABLE, THE SPOT, FLAGSHIP and MAISON, with 2 to 16 lit display cases. Press P to put stacks on display. Buyers walk in asking for what's in the cases and pay more for the curation, from 4% at the table to 18% at the maison. They show up on the wall tagged IN THE SHOP, and you still name every price.
THE CREW: hire people
Press H. Three people from the building are looking for work every week, each with a trait:
- EAGLE EYE calls out lying stickers and fakes on the wall before you open.
- HUSTLER brings two more walk-ups a day.
- SMOOTH gives you one more offer before anyone walks.
- SHOPKEEPER doubles the walk-ins at your shop.
- TALKER makes everyone you close with like you more.
- LOYAL never steals and never asks for a raise.
Some of them have a trait they don't mention, and you find out after about a week: STICKY FINGERS (pairs walk out the back) or LAZY. You hire by naming a wage against the least they'll work for. Use the arrows, or type the exact number.
Eli's fixes
- Clicking your angles on the street opens THE ANGLES, not whatever tab you looked at last.
- You can see the condition before you deal. Lots and pallets now say what they are on the box ("218 · MIXED", "9 · DS"), the counter under the wall leads every pair with its condition, and lots get a breakdown like "218 pairs: 120 DS · 98 USED".
Also
- Steam now lists O'BLOCK with partial controller support (Xbox controllers). The whole game plays on a pad; Y opens a menu of every key the screen offers.
- The Halloween event runs Oct 24 to Nov 1.
- Your save carries over. Shops, crews and collections start empty on old saves.
- The new text is in English for now. Translations for the other 14 languages are coming.
Tell us what you find. The last two updates came straight from player notes, and so will the next one.