gaming professionals, press and developers alike, resent the game for its sales? It
would appear so.
But this is not the case withTetris.Tetrisconquered the world in terms of popular-
ity, yet one is hard pressed to find anyone with a negative comment about the game.
What is it aboutTetristhat makes the game immune to criticism? It would appear some-
thing about the game’s simplicity and clearness of design vision makes even the most
cynical game developer concede the game’s greatness. Contrary to what happened
withMyst, whenTetriswas first released, most of the gaming press dwelled on the
game’s origins in Russia and seemed underwhelmed, or at least unexcited, by the title’s
gameplay. The game was so simple, its technology so lacking in razzle-dazzle that, per-
haps, the press found themselves incapable of writing enthusiastically about the game
— at least at first. Now that the game is an undisputed classic, any game critic will be
happy to tell you about the hundreds of hours he spent blissfully lost in the game.
Gameplay inTetrisis exceedingly uncomplicated. The game-world is a tall, rectan-
gular, 2D box. Blocks appear at the top of the box. The blocks are made up of four
squares arranged in every possible pattern where all the squares share at least one side
with another square. The blocks then slowly fall to the bottom of the box, and players
are able to move these blocks to the left and right, or rotate the piece in 90 degree incre-
ments. Once the block hits an obstruction, either the bottom of the box or another
piece, the block stops moving, players lose control of the block, and another piece that
players can now control appears at the top of the screen. When the blocks at the bottom
of the screen form a horizontal line across the rectangle, that line of squares disappears,
and any squares above that line move down one row. The players’ game is over once
incomplete rows of the blocks fill up the game-world rectangle and subsequent pieces
are prevented from entering the play-field.
Puzzle Game or Action Game?.......................
Tetrisis often referred to as a puzzle game, and for good reason.Tetrishas elements
obviously reminiscent of a puzzle, with players needing to find how blocks best fit
together. In this way the game is similar to a right-angle jigsaw puzzle, or any number of
other “organize these geometrical shapes in this small space” puzzles. An even better
comparison would be the traditional game pentomino, from which Alexey Pajitnov,
Tetris’s designer, is supposed to have drawn inspiration. In pentomino, one must take
twelve different shaped pieces, each made out of five squares, and fit them into a square
box. One can see the similarities, but at the same timeTetrischanges the game into
something entirely different, something entirely more challenging and compelling.
Pajitnov could have just as easily made a direct adaptation of pentomino to the com-
puter, as many other developers have done for jigsaw puzzles or “sliding number”-type
puzzles. This might have been an entertaining program, though perhaps not as fun as
the actual game itself since part of the fun of pentomino is the tactile nature of manipu-
lating the blocks. But by taking the puzzle and changing it into a game that could only
happen on the computer, Pajitnov ended up creating a unique new game that is far more
entertaining than the original.
Many times when members of the computer game intelligentsia refer to a game as
being a puzzle game, they do so with derision. For them a puzzle game is one that
142 Chapter 8: Game Analysis:Tetris