Some people might call Tetris the perfect game, and it’s hard to argue with that. Created in 1985, Tetris has endured across generations and platforms, making its way onto essentially every platform possible. The game is simple and timeless, with one block falling at a time. There are a few basic shapes, like L-blocks, squares, and z-shaped squiggles, and the player must interlock the pieces together until rows fill the screen horizontally, which clears them, making room for more bricks.
There are various ways to enjoy the core Tetris loop as a pastime — some people like to relax and unwind, while others treat it as a challenge. Then there are the games that take the core foundation of Tetris and crank things up.
The most obvious example of this is Tetris 99, the battle royale game on Nintendo Switch. Each player is locked into their own individual game that ramps up in speed until only one player remains. Some players get eliminated right off the bat in the initial churn, but that doesn’t promise an easy match. Not only are you playing against dozens of other Tetris fans, but they sabotage your game by sending their overflow blocks over to your screen at the worst possible moments. I’ve only scraped out a couple of Tetris 99 wins, and each one was a hard fought battle.
With classic Tetris, difficulty can be scaled up through speed, too, with blocks piling up until they inevitably end the game. In January 2024, a 13-year-old gamer was the first player to beat NES Tetris, an astonishing feat that most thought impossible. The game is so simple, yet intuitive, that it can serve as a foundation for developers to wreak all sorts of havoc.
Consider for instance, the curious case of Schwerkraftprojektiongerät, a fan version of Tetris from Stephen Lavelle that’s as hard to play as it is to pronounce. This version has four different games of Tetris playing at once, each on a different angle, and with gravity skewed so blocks can tumble from one game into another. Another solo developer ran an experiment called Terrible Tetris Tuesday, all about coming up with a new, unhinged take on the original game each Tuesday, like a version with sticky blocks, or one with a persistent fog of war.
Reaktor, released in October 2024, looks like a game in this genre at first glance. The big twist here is that you’re playing a game like Tetris, but with each turn, gravity moves like a windmill, and the player must build up a cube in the center rather than a line at the bottom. When you first see how the cube in the center of the screen can spiral out of control, it feels intimidating. But figuring out how to right your wrongs and adapt to building a cube is a fascinating challenge.
I thought Tetris pieces were familiar friends, but Reaktor made me reconsider each one. I trusted you, L-block; how could you screw my run like this? It’s always fascinating to see developers return to such a beloved title and figure out a new angle to complicate the classic formula. If you’re interested in testing your brain against an evolution of the original Tetris, then a game like Reaktor is a great choice. Luckily, our cups will runneth over with new Tetrises for as long as people are making games, whether that be Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Tetris Effect, or a solo dev project that makes the comforting puzzle game much more challenging and mind-bending.
