[1] It was created by American developer Eric "Badspot" Hartman, using the Torque Game Engine, and was originally released as freeware on November 15, 2004.

Styled as a minifigure, players build inside of the virtual world using bricks reminiscent of toy blocks.

Blockland features non-player characters, weapons, destructible vehicles, and a minigame system, enabling users to create new self-contained gameplay modes.

Blockland features a trigger and event-based system to create basic interactive objects, such as operable light switches, missile launchers, collapsing structures, or arcade games such as Pong or Breakout.

Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail wrote an article on this early version of Blockland, in which creator Eric "Badspot" Hartman claimed the game had gained 20,000 users in the ten days since it "became big", after being featured on The Screen Savers.