The original Tetris, released in 1984, is one of the most well-known and played games in the world. But for those who’ve played the game to death and moved on to a wider variety of games, it could feel like Tetris is missing that extra love it needs to be exciting again.
Here we have a collection of Tetris spin-off games, both official and unofficial ones that try to add that little something extra in a wonderfully weird way. Fortunately the simple but brilliant gameplay mechanics of Tetris can be mimicked easily, so there are a surprising bunch of these.
Our picks are the following:
Not Tetris 2
The blocks can be rotated and physics play a big role in this unofficial spin-off.
V-Tetris
Only 22 games were released for Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. One of them was V-Tetris and you don’t need the console to burn out your eyes, just stare at this screenshot for a while.
Hatris
Released in 1990, Hatris feature different types of hats instead of blocks falling from the top that we have to stack to clear the stage.
Welltris
The first sequel to Tetris expands the 2D space to 3D with a top-down view. The images change over time, just to make sure that you’re unable to focus on the game.
Wordtris
Designed by Alexey Pajtinov (the same man behind Faces, Hatris, Welltris and of course the original game) and released in 1991, the title already suggests that letters will replace blocks. We have to construct words of three letters vertically or horizontally.
Faces …Tris III
Different kinds of faces have to be built properly (for example the nose should be above the mouth) in this 1993 sequel.
Puyo Puyo
Puyo Puyo was the first really competitive Tetris-like game, where we could build up combos and flood the opponent’s screen with useless blocks. After getting an arcade port, it became a huge success, followed by many ports, sequels and spin-offs.
There must be other crazy Tetris homebrews, clones and look-alikes out there. Share them in the comments below.
Sources: Maria Vitaly, Schlauchi’s LP, Isaiah Whitfield, Atari Greenlog, HardcoreGaming101
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