Tetris 99
Play it on: Switch
Current goal: Finally win a round (or place in the final three again)
Buy it now: Amazon |GameStop
The kiddos can keep having fun playing their Fortnite and Call of Duty battle royale games because the real warriors are slugging it out in Tetris 99. Initially announced, and shortly after released, during a 2019 Nintendo Direct presentation, Tetris 99 is an online battle royale game in which you compete against 98 other players to see who’s got the quickest hands and the sharpest mind for stacking a bunch of blocks together into orderly lines. The twist, however, is that once you clear two or more lines, you can send them over to other players as junk they’ll have to sort out before their pile gets too high and they get knocked out of the game.
I’m no novice when it comes to Tetris 99. In fact, I’ve sunk more hours into it than beefy time-consuming role-playing games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Nier: Automata. I’ve even figured out “optimal times to play”—that being in the middle of a workday, preferably during lunch—because then the Tetris 99 killers won’t be online to crush my hopes of being the last player standing. Those galaxy-brained characters tend to come out and play toward the wee hours of the night, you see. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Read More: Tetris 99 Has No Tutorial, So Here’s What You Need To Know
While I’ve never won Tetris 99, I’ve gotten pretty bloody close a handful of times. Most recently, I placed in the final three of the game, that is before my cat decided to rub his face against my Switch in a desperate attempt to get a crumb of attention. His selfish and adorable act of neediness cast aside all hope of me pulling the game back into my favor because I immediately biffed the placement of a four-line-clearing knock-out piece. Hopefully this weekend I can cease being the Tetris 99 bridesmaid and blossom into the stunning block-stacking bride that I am. If I do, it’s probably thanks to the fact that I’m playing on a Kirby-themed Tetris 99 board. — Isaiah Colbert
