Sandtrix is the answer to the question, what if Tetris was fucked up beyond all recognition. The answer is, still a pretty awesome game. It turns out that Tetris is the COVID of videogames. The more you try and mess with it the more this analogy falls apart. All I’m saying is that Every Indy game these days is improved by sand physics. That’s what Noita taught me at least.

Sandtrix is a java game published on itch.io by mslivo for the price of whatever you think it’s worth. Personally I think it’s worth a lot. It was originally called Setris but a DMCA from Tetris put a stop to that. Also in my video below I called it Estris the entire time. RIP.

Either way You can download the game right here.

So yeah Tetris blocks in this game collapse into piles of sand. so there’s going to be no wells for doing a tetris into, and there’s no T-Spins or holds. This is classic tetris, if classic tetris was as stable as my employment prospects.

The rules are pretty easy, all you have to do is connect a single colour from the left hand edge of the screen with the right. Gravity is in full effect so once you destroy a row a cascade effect goes off, giving you the chance to pull off some pretty awesome combos. This really does feel like the perfect combonation of Puyo puyo tetris that puyo puyo tetris never bothered with.

Honestly if they wanted to skirt any potential lawsuits the block shapes are almost entirely arbitrary. Although if you replace the tetris blocks with I dunno, trumps face or something the novelty factor gets stripped away a bit. But it’s such a solid game that I feel like it should be able to stand on it’s own two feet without the clout of tetris to piggy back on.

Note: viewers pointed out that the Tetris blocks aren’t a copyright issue. The developer believes that the DMCA was primarily due to the music used. He also tried different block shapes but it wasn’t as fun apparently.

There are 3 game modes and 5 difficulty settings. The difficulty changes the well depth and cranks the speed for maximum butthole tightening while playing. I’d rate my butthole at duck levels of tightness while playing the harder difficulties.

Personally I love this game. It’s hypnotic, and brings the mindful zoning out of Tetris in a new form.