Tetris games

Play Tetris games for free online at Starbie

At Starbie, we have a large collection of Tetris games. All of the games shown on this page are browser games. This means that each game can be opened in an internet browser window and played directly - no downloads required. Below, we’ve listed a bit more information about our Tetris games and the history of Tetris.

What is Tetris

Tetris is a tile-matching game, and it is one of the best-selling video games of all times. The objective is to arrange the falling tiles into complete rows. Geometric shapes will fall down from the top of the screen. These shapes are called Tetronimoes, and each Tetronimo is made up of four squares. The player can move these shapes as long as they are still falling. Once a shape hits the surface below, it can no longer me moved. The player must stack up the shapes as neaty as possible, without forming gaps between the blocks. Complete rows will vanish from the playing field, creating more space for new shapes.

How to play Tetris games

The player must keep the playing field from filling up with blocks. If the blocks are stacked too high, the player will not have enough time to rotate them and move them into place. In Tetris, the field will eventually fill up with blocks. This is unavoidable, and the player’s aim is just to prevent this from happening for as long as possible. However, the longer the player manages to stay in the game, the more the game continues to speed up.

History of Tetris - the beginning

Tetris was created in 1984 by the software engineer Alexey Pajitnov. The game is named after Pajitnov’s favourite sport, tennis, and ‘tetra-’, the Greek prefix meaning ‘four’. Pajitnov designed Tetris for the Soviet Electronika 60 computer, but wanted to create a version for the IBM PC as well. To do this, he hired Vadim Gerasimov, who was at the time 16 years old and still in high school.

History of Tetris - international success

Pajitnov initially circulated Tetris among his colleagues, many of whom quickly became addicted to it. He also wanted to publish Tetris abroad, but Soviet researchers were not allowed to sell the programmes they created, and also did not have intellectual property rights to their creations. Consequently, Tetris travelled through a very convoluted path of licencing deals and disputes. At one point, around ten different companies across the world thought they owned the rights to the game! Tetris proved incredibly popular all over the world, and became especially well-known when it was made the standard game cartridge provided with the Nintendo Game Boy.

History of Tetris – The Tetris Company

Pajitnov eventually discovered that millions of copies of the game had been sold worldwide, from which he hadn’t made any money. In 1991, Pajitnov emigrated to the United States. In 1996, the previous agreements expired and the rights to the game reverted to him. Together with video game designer Henk Rogers, who had previously bought the rights to Tetris and had befriended Pajitnov over a board game years earlier, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company. This company now manages the rights to the game.

Related games

The success of Tetris has led to the creation of block puzzle games based on a similar concept. Players who enjoy Tetris, might also enjoy our 10x10 puzzle games. In these games, players must drag shapes onto the board to piece together complete rows and columns. The objective is to keep clearing enough space for more blocks. Fans of tile-matching puzzles might also enjoy our Hexagon games collection, a set of puzzles with hexagonal instead of square tiles.