Tetris is a puzzle game designed by Alexey Pajitnov at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1984. Seven geometric pieces fall from the top of a well; the player rotates and places them to complete horizontal lines, which disappear. Lines stack faster as the game progresses. No other game has spread as far, across as many platforms, or into as many hands.
Tetris was designed by Alexey Pajitnov at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, completing the first version in June 1984. The name combines the Greek prefix tetra (all pieces are made of four blocks) with tennis, Pajitnov's favourite sport. He originally coded it on an Electronika 60 — a Soviet computer with no graphical display — representing pieces with bracket characters.
Seven tetrominoes — the I, O, T, S, Z, L, and J pieces — fall one at a time from the top of a rectangular well ten cells wide. The player moves each piece left and right and rotates it before it lands. Complete a horizontal line with no gaps and it vanishes; incomplete lines stack. When the stack reaches the top of the well, the game ends. Clear four lines simultaneously with an I-piece — a Tetris — and the score multiplies. That single interaction, discovered and rediscovered by every player independently, is one of game design's most elegant moments.
Tetris escaped the Soviet Union through a series of licensing disputes and platform ports that became the subject of a feature film. Its Game Boy version — bundled with Nintendo's handheld in 1989 — is among the best-selling game-hardware combinations ever released. It has since appeared on over sixty platforms. Cognitive scientists have studied it extensively; the "Tetris effect" — involuntarily visualising falling pieces after extended play — became a documented psychological phenomenon.
Tetris is ranked #2 on Rolling Stone's 2025 list of the 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time. It is among the most-played games in history and is frequently cited as proof that game design at its purest requires no story, no characters, and no setting — only a rule, a consequence, and escalating pressure.