Geometrix 2.0

That someone could actually design a game where you shoot colored cubes at colored cubes and wait for them to disappear from the screen. And that someone actually did it in the nineties. Geometrix 2.0 is exactly that kind of thing.

It's a puzzle game in the spirit of Tetris or Puyo Puyo, where geometric shapes fall and you orient them so they connect with others of the same color and vanish. You play it on MS-DOS, the graphics are simple, the sound minimal, the goal clear: fill your screen for as long as possible and rack up points. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, pure mechanics without unnecessary flourishes.

The controls are simple and respond without lag, which is key for puzzle games. The speed at which pieces fall increases as you progress, and that's exactly when you realize it's not as dull as it looks. Once you get into the rhythm, things start clicking and time just flies by. It's not revolutionary by any means, but it has its own straightforward appeal.

Geometrix 2.0 belongs in the category of games you remember more by accident than on purpose. It wasn't a hit, it had no fanbase, it disappeared in a flood of identical clones. Like seventy percent of the software from back then that was churned out without any quality control. It aged decently, though, because puzzle games age better than anything else — the rules don't change.

Nowadays only someone who digs the architecture of nineties PC gaming or wants a hassle-free way to kill some time will play it. It runs fine in a browser, nothing to complain about. If you're bored, you can look at it like a digital relic — proof that back then things got made simply because they could be made.