Next-Gen Tetronimoes: Ubisoft Announce Tetris Ultimate

Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris on the Electronika 60, a computer with only 8KB of RAM. Thirty years later, 8GB of RAM is not uncommon for a gaming PC. What could Tetris do with all this extra memory we have now, all these spare processor cores, all these fancy graphics cards? Give us freedom to roam an open-world Tetris Land, doing Tetris parkour, following high-poly Tetris blocks going about their daily routines, customising and upgrading our tetrominoes, and becoming the unlikely hero of Tetris society.

If there's anyone who'd give us that, it's probably Ubisoft. The publishers have announced Tetris Ultimate, their "next-gen Tetris." But... oh. It's nothing like that. It's just Tetris with a few modes.

Tetris Ultimate is Tetris, see, with six fancy modes supporting up to four players. It also has leaderboards and social bits that follow your friends' play and whatnot. Here's the skinny on its modes:

• Marathon – Get to level 15 and rack up as many points as you can.
• Endless – Go as high as level 30 and keep clearing lines as long as possible.
• Ultra – Get your highest score before time runs out in this three-minute challenge.
• Sprint – Clear 40 lines as quickly as you can.
• Battle – Go head-to-head to knock out your opponents.
• Power-Up Battle – Be the last person playing after using crazy power-ups! Go on the offensive with Carousel and make your opponent's Well shift to the left after each move, or trigger Let it Rain and dump garbage down on top of them. Buzz Saw helps you out by clearing away a number of your lines – especially useful when you're in a spot of trouble.

They sound fun enough, but it's hard to get too excited about given that we already have Tetris Friends and Tetrinet and oodles of other free clones and variants on PC.

Developed by SoMa Play, Tetris Ultimate is slated to arrive this autumn.