Think Dwice

Friday 31 March 2006
Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, has released Dwice, a new puzzle game for PC. It involves clearing blocks as they slowly sink from the top of the screen to the bottom.

BUT WAIT! It's not as cheekily derivative as it first appears. Dwice is Tetris with a twist, and the sniffles. With the game's world hit by a sudden ice age, it's your job to protect the inhabitants by smashing up the avalanches of ice that are descending on them.

The solid block of ice that scrolls slowly down from the top of the screen needs to be broken apart, not rearranged. The block is cut up into a set of simple shapes, and matching two of the same with clicks of your mouse will make them vanish. They come in a variety of colours, so it's not only the shape that matters this time. A few bonus emergency power-ups, such as screen-clearing dynamite, are thrown in as lifelines.

Dwice is only available on PC, and only available for download from Wildsnake.com. A demo's available, though, at around 13MB in size. The 360 Live Arcade conversion of Pajitnov's previous game, Hexic, worked perfectly on Microsoft's console, but Dwice seems like a game that wouldn't translate so smoothly. It could find an ideal home on DS, however...