Falling Blocks, Enduring Love: The Timeless Magic of Tetris

What makes a game with no characters, no story, and no ending one of the most beloved of all time? In this episode, we dive into the deceptively simple brilliance of Tetris—a game born in 1985 Soviet Russia that took the world by storm when it was bundled with the Game Boy. Through a personal lens of family obsession and homemade code, our guest unpacks the elegant mechanics behind the falling blocks: movement, creation, destruction, and problem-solving. Discover how Tetris taps into something deeply human—and why it still holds us in its hypnotic grip decades later in this discussion of writing by Patrick Curry from the Well Played academic analysis of well-loved games.