“Hey Gooch, why don’t you make Tetris with music?” — Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s recollection at GDC of how The Tetris Company’s Henk Rogers pitched him on the creation of Tetris Effect.
Features Editor, Kotaku. Japanese curry aficionado. Author of the books Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life and Final Fantasy V from Boss Fight Books.
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DISCUSSION
I think of this game as Tetris Distract. I’m literally never looking at the fancy stuff going on in the background while I’m playing, and it only makes the pieces hard to see, along with the fact that they’re all the same color. The challenge of this game is entirely in how much it distracts you from playing Tetris and makes it hard to see what you’re doing.
I found the option to turn off most of the effects and make the pieces have different colors, but then the game looks like garbage. And not even a rudimentary two-player mode? Puyo Puyo Tetris and Tetris Ultimate were much better Tetris games.