The story of Tetris is pretty well known by now.
Another case in point: Tetris was the first video game to have been played in space.
1993 again - a big year for Tetris, it would seem.
Doesn’t that feel bizarre but also just right?
Tetris out there, ringing around the music of the spheres?
But that’s the joy of what Digital Eclipse does.
Attention is lavished on it.
Lots of it is interactive and genuinely playable.
And even before all that, the curation is exquisite.
Previously we’ve been given Karateka and the birth of the cinematic impulse in games.
We’ve been given Jeff Minter, a genuine creative genius.
And now Tetris, the forever game.
The game so deliriously simple and compulsive it still feels like it was discovered as much as invented.
And so clever people either add new tweaks - the hold button, soft- and hard-drops, Ultimatris!
- or they engage in weird variations and mutations.
I love this stuff, and here you might play an awful lot of it.
Better than working brilliantly - and I mean this as a high compliment - it sort of works.
It’s a wonderfully elbowy, awkward cludging together of slightly different experiences.
It feels like one of those science fiction movies where people slip back and forth between dimensions.
It’s Tetris: His Dark Materials.
Tetris Forever accessibility options
Some versions of Tetris have remappable controls.
And then there’s the final great version of Tetris, the one at the heart of the collection.
And it turns out to be the first version of Tetris.
And you really see afresh that Tetris was pretty much born perfect.
It’s unnaturally natural.
It’s the game that someone, something, will be playing somewhere when the sun explodes.
A copy of Tetris Tetris Forever was provided for review by developer Digital Eclipse.
