Tetris Effect VR
Tetris Effect: Connected
Tetris rebuilt around music and light. Every rotation, drop and line clear plays into a soundtrack, and each stage surrounds you with its own world of colour and sound. In VR it becomes one of the most absorbing, calming puzzle games there is, and a surprisingly good tool for talking about focus and spatial reasoning.
Tetris Effect was developed by Monstars and Resonair, with Tetsuya Mizuguchi as a co-producer, and first released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR on 9 November 2018. It reached Meta Quest on 14 May 2020. The Connected update, which added cooperative and competitive multiplayer, arrived on Quest as a free expansion in August 2021. The game takes its name from the "Tetris effect", where people who play for a long time keep seeing falling blocks when they close their eyes.
The rules are classic Tetris, but the presentation is not. The game has thirty themed stages, each with its own music and visuals, and your moves are tied to the beat. A Zone mechanic lets you pause time and clear more than four lines at once, something standard Tetris does not allow. It was very well reviewed, with Metacritic scores from 80 to 94 across platforms, and won Best VR/AR Game at the 2018 Game Critics Awards. On the Meta store it is rated 4.5 from about 2,000 ratings and is rated for everyone.
- Instantly understood by every student
- Beautiful, calming music and visuals
- Comfortable seated play
- Co-op and competitive multiplayer
- Award winning and critically acclaimed
- Rated for everyone
- Entertainment, not curriculum content
- $29.99 per copy
- Intense lights and effects may not suit everyone
- Easy to lose track of time
- Limited new learning beyond Tetris skills
- Developer
- Monstars, Resonair, Stage Games
- Publisher
- Enhance
- First release
- 9 November 2018
- Quest release
- 14 May 2020
- Price
- $29.99
- Rating
- 4.5 from about 2,000 ratings
- Modes
- Single player, co-op, competitive
- Play style
- Seated
- Award
- Best VR/AR Game, Game Critics Awards 2018
- Age rating
- Everyone
