Lettrix

Lettrix is a 1990 puzzle game that looks like yet another Tetris spin at first glance — and that first glance deceives. Nothing falls here. Instead, the game hands you an outline, typically a big letter, and asks you to fill it in completely using the pieces you have been given.

That is where all the craft and all the trickery lives. You get eight kinds of blocks, some of them reminiscent of Tetris shapes, and only a limited supply of each — say ten of one type and six of another. So you have to think ahead about which piece will cover which part of the figure, because at the end nothing may be missing and nothing may be left over. Pieces rotate, and a badly placed block can be picked up again and moved, which means the game punishes bad planning rather than a slip of the finger. A clock ticks over the whole thing to stop you from pondering forever.

The result is closer to a jigsaw or a parquet-laying exercise than to an arcade game. There is even a two-player mode, and unusually it is cooperative: both players work on the same figure, alternating moves and quietly dividing up the job between them.

Honestly, this is a one-idea game. The presentation is bare, the long-term appeal depends entirely on whether the act of tiling pleases you, and anyone looking for adrenaline will leave within five minutes. But that one idea is genuinely good: budgeting limited resources and planning several moves ahead is something the average block game never asks of you. As quiet company for an evening or two of methodical thinking, it holds up nicely.

You can play Lettrix at oldgame.cz directly in your browser, no installation required.