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The other game I was playing all Easter weekend was, well… Tetris.
It’s all this thread on Talking Time’s fault. There was Tetris love! And I love Tetris. Not as much as, say, Panel de Pon. But I love Tetris.

So when Rei linked to Tetris Friends, I went and checked it out.
Hours later, I realized I had just played, well… hours of Tetris.

Tetris Friends leaves little to be desired, if it’s Tetris that you crave. You can turn the “piece shadow” off and on, so if you’re a purist who doesn’t like that, that’s your option. It has the hold thing, which I hadn’t actually used before this but actually adds a great additional element to the game. It has a couple completely normal Tetris variants, which are always needed. It has 2 player VS mode, which would be nearly perfect if you could pick your opponents. I do like the “only 2 minutes” aspect of it. Makes it easy to go “just one more game” since you know you’re not going to get trapped in an epic back and forth battle. It has a neat mode called Sprint, which you can play alone or in multiplayer, which is basically a race to clear 40 lines first. The strategy is actually much different than a normal multiplayer, as setting up Tetrises is much less important.

The only really unfortunate thing about it is that you can’t pick your opponents. I can’t challenge a friend to a game of VS. It’s all done by their matchmaking. Though their ranking system seems pretty darn effective. When I get online in Tetris DS, I am immediately destroyed by power-players. In Tetris Friends, I have yet to be completely stomped in a match. When I did some complete stomping myself, the game popped up a window and offered to rank me up about 5 ranks, which I accepted. Now I’m facing people more my level faster, which is exactly how it should be. Playing with just people who are close to your skill. Awesome.

But yeah, I dunno. I have no idea how this venture is making money. One little ad can’t pay for everything, can it? Especially since I think this is licensed and not like… the Tetris Company itself putting this out? But it’s everything I could possibly want from a Tetris game, and it’s free and online and with robust stat tracking and a “token” earning system to keep you coming back again and again. What’s not to like?