Moving Blocks Games

In moving blocks games you handle square or colored pieces to fit them together, merge them or break them. This section has more than 500 games, and very different ideas fit under the same name.

Falling pieces: the Tetris family

Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984 and it's still the benchmark. Seven shapes made of four squares fall, you rotate them and place them to complete rows, which then disappear. If the stack reaches the top, you lose. Here you'll find Tetris Arcade, Tetris3 and Mario Tetris, and Hexagonized takes the idea to six-sided cells.

Placing pieces on a grid

In games like 10x10 Hawaii you're given a few pieces and you place them yourself on a 10 by 10 board. When a row or column fills up, it clears. There's no clock, but you run out of room fast if you misplace a piece.

Merging and breaking

Merge the Numbers belongs to the games where you combine equal numbers to make a bigger one. Atari Breakout is the classic brick breaker: a ball bounces and you keep it in the air with a paddle to knock down the blocks. In Candy Craze or Candy Riddles you match candies or colored pieces.

Tips for Tetris

Keep the stack as flat as you can and avoid covered holes. Save one column, such as the one at the edge, for the long piece, which clears four rows at once when it arrives. When pieces start falling fast, watch the next piece instead of the current one: you should have already figured out where it goes.

In the grid games, before placing any piece, check whether you can fit the other two you're offered. Players who ignore the next turn run out of space.

Brick breakers like Atari Breakout are played with the mouse or arrow keys: you move the paddle left and right, and the trick is where the ball hits, since the edge of the paddle deflects it more than the center. To start, Tetris Arcade is the most direct if you want the classic, and 10x10 Hawaii is relaxed because there's no clock. Number-merging games like Merge the Numbers reward thinking things through, and Candy Craze or Candy Riddles give you something more colorful when you want another pace. With so much variety, the best approach is to try one game from each family and keep the one that suits you.