Gravitrix

Tetris is probably one of the most popular video games ever released, which probably why it even has a syndrome named after it. However, unless you aim to play it professionally at some point, the game can lose its charm after a while, mainly because nothing very exciting happens when you already know how everything is going to turn out.

Gravitrix is a Tetris clone that adds a few extra gameplay elements, in order to make the overall experience more dynamic and entertaining. However, the difficulty level has also been substantially increased in the meantime, so it’s not all fun and games. Granted, if you have played the original Tetris, then you should be able to figure this out rather quickly as well.

In short, the greatest change is the fact that each piece has weight, meaning that it can tumble and fall over if it's not placed right in the stack. This makes it significantly harder to create the straight lines required to score points, although that problem sort of goes away if you manage to reach the later stages of each level. Thus, the overall weight can arrange the pieces underneath and create lines.

Once you manage to reach a certain number of points, the stage changes and the challenge is upgraded. Hence, the pieces start to fall a lot faster, which gives you less time to think and rotate them. In fact, this is actually quite unfair, because there’s usually no time at all to perform a rotation, even if you see the right move ahead of time. Thus, frustration might kick in rather quickly.

As far as the technical aspects are concerned, the game is about as simple as a Tetris game can be, except it’s a lot more colorful, for some reason. The backgrounds are actually just plain solid colors, and they change whenever you manage to pass the stage. The pieces come in multiple colors as well, but don’t expect too much in the visual department anyway.

Gravitrix is the perfect antidote to a calm evening, because it can probably annoy even the most peaceful gamers out there. However, it’s not all about the difficulty level, because it’s much more frustrating to see how the game stops working accordingly once the speed increases and denies you the possibility to make use of the gameplay mechanics.