BeatBlox

Overview

BeatBlox is part rhythm game, part puzzler and is available from developer Aaron Ramsey on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel. The game is a fairly standard block-swapping color matching puzzler except that, like Lumines, blocks do not clear immediately after a match has been made. Instead, any adjacent matching blocks that touch one of the beat blocks on the board are cleared at key beats in the music.
 

Gameplay

Use the face buttons on the controller to move the currently selected block in the direction corresponding to that button (i.e. X = left, Y = up, B = right, A = down). As the song progresses, your energy drains. Create chains of like-colored blocks that touch one side of a beat block. At a series of predetermined points in the song, chains are cleared out and new beat blocks are placed on the board. Make long chains to recharge your draining energy. If beat blocks explode without an adjacent chain, your energy is further drained. Avoid losing your energy before the end of the song to clear the stage.