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Fortunately, the creator eventually got his fair share of the pie years later. Even though Tetris never grows old, there are plenty of other puzzle games of a similar ilk that players might want to try in order to switch things up every once in a while. Even if these don’t turn out as engaging as Tetris, it is always nice to have a palette cleanser.
7 Dr. Mario
If you slap the Mario name on something, it will attract a certain number of players by default. It is a good thing, then, that Dr. Mario is a fun puzzle game in its own right without simply relying on the character to garner sales. Instead of clearing lines like in Tetris, players have to clear all the viruses on the board by matching blocks of the same color to them in fours.
If the blocks fill up to the top, players lose. It is a little bit harder than Tetris, but early matches start off slow, making it simple to ease gamers into the rules. The first Dr. Mario was on the NES and there have been entries on almost every Nintendo console since.
6 Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo takes its aesthetic from the Street Fighter series, but its gameplay is all about falling blocks. Players have to do more than just match up blocks of the same color, though. They have to wait until the glowing orb of the color comes and then drop it on top to take out all the connected blocks.
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While this makes the game riskier, it also creates bigger chain reactions. It makes the multiplayer more intense, too. Mortal Kombat: Deception included a minigame called Puzzle Kombat which played by the same rules, only using that series’ characters instead, obviously.
5 Lumines
Lumines was created by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who would go on to make Tetris Effect. It goes without saying, then, that Lumines is also a visual and audio spectacle in addition to including fun puzzle gameplay.
The music determines the speed of the game, which, unlike Tetris, does not only make the game harder or easier. A slower game actually creates the risk of losing sooner, while a faster game makes big combos more difficult since blocks disappear faster.
4 Tricky Towers
This is probably the least popular and newest puzzle game on the list, but it bears mentioning because of how unique it is. Tricky Towers involves stacking blocks on top of each other, except gravity and physics get in the way of neatly arranging the pieces.
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Depending on the game mode, you either have to make a tower climb as high as possible without having it crash down, or you have to fit a certain number of blocks onto a space without it falling. The multiplayer modes also add an interesting competitive flare. Though it involves falling blocks, skills in Tetris of Dr. Mario won’t help in Tricky Towers.
3 Puzzle League
Like many games, Puzzle League goes by a different name, Panel de Pon, in Japan. In the United States, most gamers were introduced to this type of game with Pokemon Puzzle League. The rules here are simple; arrange the blocks in threes to make them disappear as more blocks continuously push up from the bottom.
Like in many of the games on this list, the game is over if blocks fill up the screen. Unlike a lot of Pokemon games and spin-offs, the characters here are taken from the anime series.
2 Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move
Puzzle Bobble takes the falling block idea, turns the board upside down, and lets the player shoot the pieces, which are now orbs. You have to shoot them to group up corresponding colors. The cool thing here is pulling off trick shots like deflecting the orb off the side of the playing field to land it in hard-to-reach places.
The game’s aesthetic is just as appealing as the gameplay, with upbeat music and cutesy dinosaurs as the mascot. For some reason, the game was renamed Bust-A-Move in the west.
1 Puyo Puyo
To make this game more appealing to American gamers, the first release was rebranded as Dr. Robotnick’s Mean Bean Machine. Despite the Sonic makeover, it retained the same rules of grouping these gooey pieces together and creating chain reactions.
If players want a really intense puzzle experience, then they just need to play Puyo Puyo Tetris and its sequel. Here, they can play one game or the other, or they can do rounds where both are combined, creating a wild puzzle gaming experience that forces people to constantly be on their toes and switch up the way they think.
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