Tetris Effect

Music is how I most often come down. The minute I pop my overpriced earphones into my head and put on my messy, uncurated playlist of liked songs, my worries wash away. Even now, I’m listening to Phoebe Bridgers and Connor Oberst’s joint record Better Oblivion Community Center to simultaneously listen to a record I’ve meant to throw on for some time now, put on something folk-adjacent to relax the nerves, and motivate me to write today. I’m chill as fuck now. And you can be too, if you just give yourself over to music.

Enter Tetris Effect, the dreamiest iteration of the otherwise most stressful game ever. Tetris Effect doesn’t just set the whole thing to relaxing house music with lyrics about connectedness between all living things: it transforms Tetris into a completely different experience. Similar to the effect music has on me in my real life, it exposes the rhythm of all things. There’s an ebb and flow to Tetris Effect that I could never see in other incarnations of the game. There’s a give and take, and I learned to appreciate it, and even make it work for me. I came to peace with the things I could and couldn’t do, and became better at seizing opportunities to make triumphant and huge plays. I learned to take my time and pick my moments, and by internalizing that, I made peace with some part of myself that rarely enjoyed it.

Tetris Effect actually gave me that, but it’s also just a thoroughly relaxing version of Tetris set to trippy visuals and the aforementioned house music with lyrics about connectedness. If what you really need is a semblance of unity, perhaps in the face of overwhelming dread and an existential threat, there are few experiences that can soothe you like Tetris Effect