Puzzle games involving falling blocks

If you ever looked at regular Tetris and thought, “What this really needs is eye-melting colors and a possible migraine,” then Acid Tetris (1998, DOS) is your jam. It’s the classic block-dropper, now with a palette that screams “I licked a glow stick at a rave.” Gameplay is mostly the same, but the visuals turn every l...

Beyond Columns is what happens when someone looks at Tetris and says, “What if we made it... slightly fancier?” This match-three puzzle game involves dropping shiny columns of gems and aligning them for points, all while trying to ignore the creeping realization that you’ve been playing for an hour. It’s colorful, fast-paced...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothing fits the way you want it to. You rotate pieces on every axis and eventually just start praying. It is visually hypnotic and mentally exhausting in equal measure. If you...

Welltris is a puzzle video game designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. Released in 1989, Welltris offers a fresh take on the block-dropping mechanics of Tetris, expanding the gameplay into a 3D environment. Similar to Tetris, geometric pieces fall into the well. However, instead of stacking vertically, the blocks slide down the wa...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves how you expect it to, and that’s half the fun. Blocks come in weird shapes, fall in strange ways, and the rules are just shy of being written in invisible ink. But ...