Doublelink

Double click, double fun — at least that was the idea. Doublelink is a DOS puzzle from the early nineties that bit off more than it could chew. It's played simply: two cursors, two players or you play against computer, and goal is to stack blocks so you occupy more squares than your opponent. Sound? Beeping. Graphics? Blue, yellow, green — colors like from a doctor's office.

Mechanics are straightforward. Falling pieces rotate and settle in the grid. If you fill a row horizontally or vertically it disappears and you get points. Second player does the same on the other side. As long as neither makes a mistake it's fine. But once one player's tower grows to the ceiling, the game ends. It's Tetris in a nutshell with a competitive skeleton, nothing revolutionary, nothing you didn't see on every school computer in the nineties.

What makes Doublelink more interesting than other clones? Two-player gameplay. Network support that few titles had. In an era when Doom was flying over modems, it was interesting to meet a friend in a logic game, not a shooter. The presence of another player on the other end of the keyboard beat an tireless but soulless computer. Computer plays predictably, sometimes hesitates, sometimes rushes without logic.

Today? Doublelink stopped being relevant sometime around 1993. Graphics, sound, performance — everything aged without mercy. It's not even that the game was bad, more that it was average already when it left the shop.

You can try it in a browser if the hunt for old DOS game clones has grabbed you by the throat. It sometimes appears in retro collections. It's not an experience, more an archive item — proof that creators tried everything and not everything worked out.