In July of 2011, Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Vedran Klanac, a developer and CEO of Ocean Media, teamed up on prototyping a brand new model of Tetris that Pajitnov had dreamed up – and outlined in a PowerPoint presentation. Klanac programmed the game and Pajitnov supplied suggestions: They known as it Tetris Reversed. In a panel at the Game Developers Conference 2024, they confirmed video of this prototype and described its gameplay. Very a lot a reversal of Tetris, the Tetrominoes (the universally acknowledged Tetris blocks) had been used to eradicate a wall of blocks, not stack up.
A decade on, the creators stated their game was stalled resulting from a collaborator, Martin de Ronde’s stymied efforts to maneuver it alongside into full manufacturing. They didn’t elaborate, with Pajitnov saying, “We finished the job, but in this case production never started. The next stage never happened… Probably [de Ronde] had trouble with the Tetris company… At some point he gave up.” The Tetris Company, who Pajitnov is related to, owns the rights to Tetris and related issues like Tetrominos. This game was created as a form of aspect challenge and thus by no means discovered its solution to a publishing observe.
Reverse Tetris had many of the Tetris trappings, together with the acquainted blocks, a concentrate on rating, and line deletion. Pajitnov is single minded and philosophical about his model of satisfying game design: “I love so much line collapses. Such a pleasant effect in the original game,” he wistfully says. So he saved these. But it additionally differs in some key methods. For occasion, you may hit a Reverse button to get your self out of a pickle, which swaps all the accomplished blocks with incomplete ones, kind of like smashing the Hyperspace button in Asteroids. Also, in response to Pajitnov, “Sometimes [clearing the field] is absolutely impossible,” so based mostly on the roll of the blocks, a win situation is just not assured. They elaborated that a median game (for the handful of people who performed it) is 10 minutes. The excellent game is feasible with the proper setup, the place the whole board is cleared, however that has not been achieved by the devs.
Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain video of the demo that was shown at GDC, but it will be archived on the GDC website. However, after capturing the minutes-long slice of gameplay shown in the session, Klanac commented: “After I played this [10 minute demo], I played another two hours,” emphasizing how hard it is to put down Tetris Reversed.
Reflecting on Tetris Reversed, Pajitnov says: “The fun factor is higher in (the original) Tetris than here. [Reversed] is a more cerebral game. Tetris allowed different kind of styles. You can choose your own style. In this case it’s rather straightforward strategy." Yet, he added: “The studying curve… In my feeling it’s shorter than unique Tetris.”
Samuel Claiborn is IGN's managing editor and a fixes/breaks historical arcade and pinball machines in his storage. TCELES B HSUP to observe him @Samuel_IGN on Twitter.