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Play Snake and Tetris at the same time, and get ready to die

Play Snake and Tetris at the same time, and get ready to die

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Of frustration, because wow is this game hard

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If you like being frustrated — briefly and in a satisfying way — have I got a game for you! Grégoire Divaret-Chauveau, a developer based in Nancy, France, has made a web game where you play the arcade classics Tetris and Snake at the same time with the same controls. The catch: when you lose in one, you lose in the other.

According to Divaret-Chauveau’s website, the game was made for Codevember, which, like its siblings Inktober (art) and NaNoWriMo (novel writing), it compels developers to produce a new small work every day based on a theme; the 9th day’s prompt was “game.” (NaNoWriMo doesn’t have daily prompts because, uh, you’re supposed to be writing a novel. Although, if you’re looking for one, try the hero’s journey next year.)

I’ve been playing Divaret-Chauveau’s game this morning because I love Snake and Tetris, but unlike chocolate and peanut butter, for me, these two flavors don’t go that well together. That’s mostly because they’re challenging separately, but when you put them together, the difficulty shoots up because it suddenly feels impossible to clear lines in Tetris while simultaneously avoiding the confines of your box in Snake. As I quickly figured out, the best way to think about it is: you can tap more than once in the same direction to move pieces in Tetris without messing up your snake’s progress, and you can also instant drop in Tetris so you don’t totally go off course with your snake.

The experience of thinking about the two simultaneously is like trying to count in your head while someone else is yelling numbers at you. Or maybe it’s like trying to avoid thinking about peeing while you’re driving in a car along the banks of a river. It is a beautiful counterpoint, and you’ll die every time.