‘Tetris’ Creator Offers Glimpse Of ‘Reversed’ Game That Never Happened
Illustration 87160272 © Vladimir Kolosov | Dreamstime.com
The 2024 Game Developers Conference (GDC) turned into a nostalgic playground of sorts for retro game lovers when Alexey Pajitnov, the brains behind Tetris, and Croatian developer peeled back the curtains of a sequel that was never released: Tetris Reversed. This prototype, long whispered about in the corridors of gaming forums, brought a new twist to the legendary block-dropping game.
Conceived in 2011, Tetris Reversed took the classic formula and flipped it on its head with a ‘Reverse’ button. Instead of frantically fitting Tetriminos (those iconic Tetris shapes) together to clear lines, players were made to strategically “eat away” at pre-existing blocks on the board.
Today, Alexey Pajitnov and others who unearthed a forgotten game in the Tetris canon talked about Tetris Reversed. https://t.co/KbN78MRl7m
— GamesBeat (@GamesBeat) March 22, 2024
With the lost, alternate version, gamers were tasked to swap completed blocks for incomplete ones. This curveball not only added a layer of strategy but also promised a mind-bending challenge. It also served as a significant departure from the traditional game, where the goal is to stack and clear lines.
Pajitnov mused over the sequel’s complexity, hailing it as “Tetris for like 300 IQ people.”
This intriguing prototype was more of a side project, so its struggles with overcoming those licensing stumbling blocks probably didn’t faze the creators so much.
