Bot Difficulty

Bloblokin ships 5 bot difficulties. They are not scripted routines: each one evaluates every legal placement for the current blob, scores it on how flat, how hole-free and how dangerous the resulting board would be, and plays the best one, then, depending on tier, deliberately fails to. A bot's decisions are deterministic within a game: given the same board and the same blob it always reaches the same conclusion, so its mistakes are budgeted rather than random.

The difficulty tiers

Reading the table

The surprising column is the speed one: the top tiers barely get faster hands, and the two strongest do not differ at all. That is deliberate. Pending Sludge lands when a blob locks, so a bot that places faster also swallows garbage faster: raw speed is a measured defensive liability in versus play, and a sped-up bot loses to its own slower twin. Strength above the middle tier therefore comes from the brain, not the pace: an attack-shaped evaluation that values doubles, triples and Quads instead of burning worthless singles, far fewer blunders, and (for Pro) a ply of lookahead that also places the next blob before committing to this one.

The Pocket column matters more than it looks: Beginner and Easy never use it, so they cannot rescue a blob that does not fit and will take the damage instead.

Which to practise against

• Beginner: for learning the controls and watching a board fill up slowly. It misplays constantly and gives you time to think.
• Easy: a real opponent that still forgives mistakes. Good for a first look at offsetting incoming Sludge, because it does not punish a slow answer.
• Medium: the honest benchmark. It uses the Pocket, blunders occasionally, and will win if you build sloppily. If you can beat Medium consistently, your stacking fundamentals are sound.
• Hard: practise under pressure. It almost never misplays and builds for big clears, so surviving means digging efficiently and cancelling rather than trading.
• Pro: never misplays and plans the next blob. Use it to test a specific skill (a Quad setup, a dig pattern) against an opponent that will punish anything less.

Each tier beats the one below it reliably, so moving up one step is a real change rather than a label. See Strategy for what to fix when a tier starts beating you.

Where bots turn up

• Offline versus. Duels and rumbles against bots at the difficulty you pick when you set the match up, no connection required, and nothing is rated.
• Online rooms waiting for players. If a queue does not fill, bots take the empty seats so the game starts anyway. A human who joins bumps a bot out.
• Private lobbies. The host decides whether bots may backfill and at which difficulty, so a two-friend rumble can still run a full room.

In matchmaking, a bot's difficulty is picked from your own rating band and deliberately runs a little behind it, so climbing stays possible. Bot seats carry a rating on their plate like any other seat, and results against them move your rating at half weight; see Ranks & Rating.

Bots and items

Bots play the item modes too. In Mayhem they collect capsules from their own clears; in Loadout they field a full set of picks. Either way they fire what they are holding at you, so practising Mayhem & Loadout offline is a real rehearsal for the online versions rather than a quiet solo run.