Twinstack Reviews

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6/10

Do you think you've seen every possible take on the Tetris genre? Do you think you've mastered them all? Think again. Excellent twist on the classic puzzle that pulls no punches, between splitting your attention and the use of several challenging 5-block pieces. I haven't tried the dual mode yet, that must be fiendish! The graphics at maximum settings are very pretty, but some of the block colouring is too similar to the background making the pieces a bit hard to see. It's a minor inconvenience, but it would be lovely if some of the green hues were changed into, say, blue or something that stands off more. TL, DR: great little game. If you like Tetris, try it!

[b]twinstack[/b] is a less conventional take on tetris. not only does it play horizontally, but shapes are coming from both sides. after placing the first in the middle, the rest can only be stopped by other shapes and the game ends if either edge of the screen is reached. [b]2 game modes[/b], single and dual. the former alternates sides and there's only one piece in play at a time, the latter has you controlling pieces from both sides separately but at the same time. good luck... the next piece on both sides is shown, points are only awarded for clearing lines. controls are the usual, wasd and/or arrows to move and rotate, but [b]since it's horizontal, left rotates, right speeds up movement or vice versa[/b] if the block is coming from the other side. space doesn't drop the current piece. it needs getting used to for sure and it's very much a balancing act. if you keep clearing lines on one side, the whole thing moves towards that edge, and clearing all the lines leaves you with nothing to stick pieces to. resolution options and windowed mode only via the unity launcher on startup, no volume settings, just separate toggles for the decent if extremely repetitive music and fitting sfx. you're dealing with stone blocks and the sounds convey that well. a few graphics settings and toggles for the day/night cycle and background objects are all the other things to customize, also while playing if you press esc. unfortunately, [b]visibility is poor even with background objects and nighttime turned off[/b], and while some settings are saved, [b]objects have to be turned off every time you start the game[/b]. non-buggy settings and a clear background option would be necessary for this to be recommendable. it's very hard to tetris when you can't be sure where to put pieces.