Tetris Effect Was Inspired By Science To Entrance You For Hours

Allow me to direct your attention to The Tetris Effect, which was revealed via an extremely hypnotic trailer via livestream on PlayStation today. 

Named for the well-known phenomenon where people report "seeing" Tetris blocks falling through their vision hours after a play session, the game is the brain child of Tetsuya Miziguchi, creator of Lumines and Rez Infinite. 

"The idea behind The Tetris Effect, the game, is to amplify and enhance that same magical feeling where you just can’t get it out of your head, and not just the falling shapes, but all the visuals, the sounds, the music — everything!" Miziguchi writes on the PlayStation blog. 

That means taking a dozen different components like audio, special effects and background elements and making them sync perfectly with your play experience, resulting in a synesthetic symphony of shimmering, music, pulses, explosions, etc. The result ought to merge the inescapable draw of Tetris with total sensory engagement.

The Tetris Effect trailer shows evocative imagery ranging from fireworks and abstract triangular pyramid patterns to mechanical windmills, colliding planetoids, and translucent, floating squid-like beings, and is slated to play across 30 different themed stages. 

More gameplay details are still to come, but press materials promise "a player grading and leveling system as well as variable difficulty to encourage and reward replayability." Expect some hands-on impressions from various outlets when the game is on display at E3 next week, ahead of a fall launch for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation vR. 

The Tetris Effect hasn't been dubbed a "PlayStation exclusive," but no other platforms have been announced just yet. PS4 Pro owners are being promised 4K, 60fps visuals, which has previously been used to great effect in Rez Infinite.

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