The Nintendo Switch is one of the most popular consoles on the market right now, and though it’s not a perfect system, it does have a knack for getting certain types of addicting game into the gamers hands. And when it came to their Nintendo Switch Online service, they decided to go for broke and bring in a new game that was exclusive to the system, and free to those who had the online service. Tetris 99. A Battle-Royale Tetris game.
The game has been a big hit on the system, and has been bought/downloaded by millions of players. In an interview with the dev team, they talked about how this came to life:
The planning started in April 2018. In our company the development team meets once a week to discuss new ideas for games. That ended up being the inspiration for this one. We sometimes talked in those meetings about how popular the Battle Royale genre had become, but I think someone also said it was about time we made another Tetris game. At that time those two ideas instantly came together and we thought a Battle Royale Tetris game would be really fun.
Even though there were some struggles explaining how the game would be to those on the dev team:
At first, not really. Even though I told them I was going to be combining Tetris and Battle Royale, it was hard for me to explain in words that would help them imagine it. So I had some of the attendees at that meeting make a provisional version of what was in my head. I showed that to them and from then on they were fully behind the game.
The game has been so popular that they’ve even hosted tournaments that gamers have flocked to in droves. And more is said to be coming to Tetris 99 via DLC, including offline modes.
