Behold the most insane Tetris clone you will ever play: PuffTris
The more lines you match the more wildly the game board swings around in all three dimensions. It gets even more insane than you can see above, I just didn’t have that good of a game when I was capturing the video.
Another random cool bit about the game: The soundtrack is contained in a file called “pufftris.mod,” which when opened in a music player like Winamp displays the title of the piece as “zaggazogga,” and includes the comment (apparently in Swedish) “NU E DET BROTTOM! Ursäkta för att jag gör detta!” This appears to translate roughly as “NOW, IT’S A CRIME! Excuse me for doing this!” In my book, any game with a soundtrack called “zaggazogga” would be awesome for that reason alone.
I don’t remember where I originally got this game. According to the game’s closing screen it was released in May 1996, and I have had it floating around on various hard drives since high school. When I thought I had lost it in transition between computers, I tried numerous times to locate it on the internet with zero luck, and other than the reference on the game’s closing screen to an entity called “PuffSoft” and the game designer “Jesse,” there aren’t any clues as to who exactly created this game.
[2018 Update]
Some time after I published this post and video, PuffTris appeared online on the website collectingsmiles.com. Here’s the site description:
Collecting Smiles is an independent developer based in Stockholm, Sweden. Collecting Smiles was founded by Jens Andersson in 2007, while on sabbatical from his dual role as Creative and Engineering Lead at Starbreeze Studios in Sweden. He used Collecting Smiles to experiment with new gameplay types and share his findings with the gaming community.
I reached out to Jens on Twitter and confirmed… he is the original creator of PuffTris!
PuffTris was made during the demopoarty Hackerence in 1995. They held a game-jam that weekend with the theme Tetris-clone. I didn't win. :)
— Jens Andersson (@Llerd) April 26, 2018
So finally after all these years, I can give credit where it is due to Jens for creating what is still my favorite version of Tetris. Be sure to check out his current game Yoku’s Island Express, coming to PC and consoles later this year.
[End of Update]
Therefore, I present to you here today the apparently world-exclusive, unauthorized re-release of the world’s most brutal Tetris clone:
Be sure to read the README.txt file. Since this game was released sixteen years ago for MS-DOS, the only way I’ve been able to get it to run correctly on a modern PC operating system is by installing DOSBox and running PuffTris through that. The README.txt file has step-by-step instructions on how to get the game running with DOSBox.
PuffTris has always been my favorite Tetris clone. It’s not overtly evil like HATETRIS, just plain insane. Plus the soundtrack isn’t half bad, especially by mid-90s standards.
Anyway, I hope that some of you out there can enjoy PuffTris as much as I have.
