Pay-as-you-go Tetris: how EA Salt Lake is refashioning a puzzle classic

May 27th, 2013, 22:29 Posted By: wraggster

Tetris Blitz is the latest attempt to pull apart the elegant rules of the seminal Russian puzzle game and rearrange them in search of fresh novelty, this time to give the game a version tailored for iOS and Android. Alexey Pajitnov, the original’s designer, has been in consultation with EA Salt Lake to ensure the essence of Tetris is protected. Nevertheless, it’s tempting to baulk at this recasting of one of the medium’s greats in the fashions of the day. Tetris is going freemium, will have Facebook integration, and is set to be stuffed with purchasable power-ups, with play regulated by a set time limit.“The original Tetris asked players the question, ‘How long can you last?’” says Tetris Blitz’s executive producer Jeff Peters. “But when you begin to improve at the game, you will last far longer than five minutes. Tetris Blitz is the answer to the question: ‘What does Tetris look like when fitted for our contemporary lifestyle?’” In truth, he is referring not so much to a ‘lifestyle’ as to popular windows of play within the contemporary lifestyle: the daily commute, the five minutes of peace while the baby is dozing, the kind of short time frames where other Blitz-like titles (Bejeweled Blitz, Candy Crush and so on) have found a wide audience. Now you have just two minutes to play a game of Tetris, and it’s impossible to fail.Pajitnov: “The idea of a timed Tetris game really isn’t new. Tetris Ultra [mode], which has the player racing against a two-minute timer to get the best score possible, has been around since at least as early as Tetris DX. Tetris Blitz certainly stands on its own as a brand-new variant on the Tetris game, complete with power-ups and cascades, but it’s not the first to introduce a fixed time limit.” Even so, these changes appear fundamental. Is this a breaking of sacrosanct rules? Not if the new focus is on score attack, EA claims.“The team is comprised of Tetris aficionados,” says Peters. “We’ve ensured that player strategies from the original game are relevant and usable here, too, despite the shift of focus.” Those strategies are encouraged and emphasised through what is likely to be Tetris Blitz’s most controversial addition: power-ups. Players can install three of these boosters before a game, and they lend a huge variety of different buffs and benefits during play. “There are players who have used the ‘well strategy’ for years, for example, where they build a single straight well in the middle of a tightly packed wall of blocks and finally slot a single column piece in there to clear four lines in a single move,” explains Peters. The Magnet power-up encourages this strategy by taking all of your blocks and pushing them to one side, thereby giving you an instant well.”
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