Tetris has had too many variants to count during its lifetime, but the latest installment of the series is unlike any of them. Tetris Forever is a playable documentary from Digital Eclipse, the team behind this year’s Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, which includes several classic games. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive collection bringing together every game in the series. Rather, it’s an interactive history lesson filled with archival material, original interviews, and a selection of games that tell its story.
When it releases on November 12, players will be able to dive into obscure titles like Hatris and Super Bombliss alongside standard Tetris. There’s one big twist coming in the package though: Tetris Time Warp. The new game is an original creation by Digital Eclipse that’s a sort of playable extension of its documentary efforts. Ahead of its release, Digital Trends got a closer look at Tetris Forever and its wealth of historical material. Our hands-on session included a few rounds of Tetris Time Warp, a charming project that’s only making a must-own package even more enticing.
Let’s do the Time Warp again
If you’ve played The Making of Karateka or Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, you should know what to expect with Tetris Forever. The project is laid out into five chapters, each one containing an interactive timeline. If you follow that from start to finish, you’ll get a full history lesson on Alexey Pajitnov and how Tetris came to be. The project doesn’t just tell that now familiar story, though. As I poked through the timelines, I found a lot of surprising references. One slide showcased Pokémon Tetris, an oddball spinoff made for the even-odder Pokémon Mini. Another showed McDonald’s recent chicken nugget handheld, which could run Tetris.
While those games aren’t playable in the collection because they’re licensing nightmares, their inclusion helps give a wider picture of how far the series’ cultural impact has spread over the years. Digital Eclipse explains that Tetris‘ influence is a B-plot of sorts in this project. I can tell that’s the case when I find a photo of Hillary Clinton playing Tetris on an airplane deep in the suite of photos and videos.
That’s all exciting for game historians, but the meat of the package is in its included games. It’s not a massive library, but it does give a nice sample of all the ways the Tetris formula was turned inside out early in its life. That’s the exact philosophy that prompted Digital Eclipse to create its own original game, Tetris Time Warp.
The basics need little introduction. It’s Tetris with the same standardized features you’d expect, from block-holding to quick drops. The twist is its signature Time Warp feature. As I clear my well, a flashing piece occasionally drops down. It cycles between four visual styles as it falls, each representing an era of Tetris. When I drop it and clear a line, I’m suddenly warped back to a period-appropriate version of Tetris, and I have around 30 seconds to make as many combos as I can get score extra points. Sometimes I pop into a very early computer version with crude green lines; other times I land in an approximation of the Game Boy version.
The catch is that the game will also play as it did in that era, so I may suddenly lose the ability to hold blocks during that period. It’s meant to directly show players how much Tetris has changed over the years, with subtle mechanics changing the entire game. That comes into play even more in the multiplayer mode included here. When I get a warp piece, I actually send my opponent back in time instead. Rather than getting bonuses, they have to clear a certain amount of lines in order to get back to their well. That archaic design becomes a clever obstacle.
On top of that, Time Warp packs in a few other modes, like Score Attack and Marathon, to make for a complete game within a game. My favorite detail is that it also contains Digital Eclipse’s Game Boy Tetris re-creation as its own mode, as it was unable to get the license for the real version. That comes with a new expanded version of the classic Tetris theme that makes an eternal banger even catchier.
Tetris Time Warp is just one small piece of what’s shaping up to be one of 2024’s most vital projects. I can’t wait to fully dig into Tetris Forever when it launches and see what other strange history I find inside.
Tetris Forever launches on November 12 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
