How to Satisfy Your Tetris Cravings on MacOS
Apple journalist John Gruber recently lamented that there are simply no Tetris games available for macOS. And he didn’t mean there are no good games. According to Gruber, Tetris is not, period. He couldn’t find a single official Tetris game on the Mac App Store, not a single Tetris clone to satisfy his gaming nostalgia:
“As far as I can tell, not only is there no official Tetris for Mac, but there are no games like Tetris either. Back in the 90s, there were some really good Tetris games for Mac. Does anyone remember Wesleyan Tetris ? It was a wacky version in which the developer, Randal Cook, sharply criticized your gameplay. “
We have your back, Gruber. Here’s a short list of all the different ways to drop and shuffle blocks in macOS.
Play Tetris in the terminal
Yes, you can still play Tetris right in the macOS Terminal . It works great in the latest version of High Sierra and we suspect this sort of Easter egg will last forever. To start the game, type “emacs” into the macOS terminal, press “Enter”, press ESC, press the “x” key, type “Tetris”, press “Enter” and start developing a strategy. (Press Command + to enlarge the playable area.)
Download Tetris from the Mac App Store
Yes Virginia, there is Tetris in the Mac App Store. You won’t find the official version of the old school game because it would be too much to ask Tetris to spend a few minutes releasing a normal version of the game that anyone could buy.
Try checking out Tetri-Pentix ($ 1.99) instead. It’s not free, and it adds an extra brick shape on top of the “classic four” you’d find in regular Tetris – sacrilege, we know – but the core gameplay is still there. Plus, it has been around for several years, so it probably won’t be forgotten by the disgruntled Tetris company.
There’s also Tico (free), which looks quite similar to Tetris, as well as Screen Bricks ($ 0.99) and Block vs Block II ($ 4.99) to name a few alternatives.
Find another download service
If you sign up with Valve’s Steam service , you can download many different Tetris -style games for macOS (but unfortunately not the best of them – Puyo Puyo Tetris ). Here are a few of our favorites:
Tricky Towers ($ 14.99) is a great new take on the block drop genre (with support for local multiplayer).
MouseCraft ($ 9.99) is a weird mix of Tetris and Lemmings and has received quite high praise from previous players.
Brick Battalion ($ 9.99) lets you take on up to eight other players at the same time if someone is actually playing an online game. (We hope AI bots give you enough trouble.)
Tico ($ 4.99) is a direct clone of Tetris, although it also adds a few extra blocks if you want to challenge yourself outside of the classic game mode.
How to find free Tetris games
If you don’t want to pay for a game you’ve played for decades, there are several free Tetris options available for macOS. Cultris II gives you a split-screen feature to play with a friend at home and some useful workouts to master your block matching skills. NullpoMino is an excellent “open source puzzle game” that you can get for macOS, which also has multiplayer support, that is, over your local network or the Internet.
You can also go online and play an emulated version of the classic Tetris for Nintendo Game Boy ( music! ), Launch the ever-popular Blockbattle.net (a TetriNET clone that can be played in a browser), or go online and try your luck in a more official version of the game … You can even install OpenEmu , get the not-so-legal ROM of whatever version of Tetris you want, and play it that way on macOS.