Alizarin Tetris is a simple but challenging game using falling shapes that must be guided into place by the gamer. After landing, if the shapes form a solid line from side to side, that row is removed and any pieces stacked on top move down a row, or until they come to rest, allowing the player more space to manoeuvre pieces and prolonging the play time. When shapes stack up to the top of the playing area the game is over. Unlike other versions of Tetris, upon loosing the game Alizarin Tetris allows the player to re-enter the game at the level achieved or to quit the game and start over at the originally specified level.
Alizarin Tetris can be played solo or two players can compete, either sharing one keyboard, or using a network.
When starting the game the player enters his name and picks a starting level from 2 to 10. Pieces glide from the top of the playing screen in specific shapes. That can be rotated, moved from side to side, or made to come down faster using the arrow keys. As the game progresses the pieces start to fall faster.
Pieces have the traditional shapes, but may fall as a single shape divided into parts. When divided into parts, the joined parts glide down together, and may be rotated and moved together, but once they land, if one part lands on a solid surface and
one or more of the pieces is able to continue falling, the pieces come loose and continue falling until they each hit a surface that causes them to rest. Like colours that settle touching each other become one piece.
Controlling the speed that pieces move sideways is difficult, but there are tricks that can help, like waiting until the piece is lower than another piece that it can be pushed up against to help guide it into the desired path.
Alizarin Tetris has quite a few ways that it can be personalized. Sound effects from a Star Trek theme to Lemmings or no sound at all. Considering the repetitive nature of the sound choices, silence is a wonderful choice. There are several colour schemes, most of them more confusing than usable, but the default colour scheme works well, and the Alphabet Soup colour scheme is very usable and has a gothic feel to it. Power pieces may be turned on or off, and consist of water drops that turn into a solid form after landing, and skulls, bombs and triangles that explode what is beneath them when they land. For a more challenging game select Double Difficulty and the pieces will become more complex and larger. Long Settle Delay controls whether the pieces hover at the top of the playing area while they start to glide, or they fall at an even pace and may be turned on or off. Under Special Options the Key Repeat choice made the game freeze up and I had to use Ctrl +alt +delete to turn the game off and free up the computer.
Over all I found this game to be a good old reliable version of Tetris and really enjoyed playing it.
