I have to be honest. When I first heard of the concept of the My Play Watch, I was skeptical. Wristwatches aren’t exactly the best fit for gaming. They’re certainly not a great fit for Tetris, a game famous for requiring often precise movements, something which touch screens don’t do all that well. And the Tetris My Play Watch does not, on first impression, play any better than you’d think. On your first attempt at marathon mode, the standard version of Tetris, you’ll likely die quickly and frustrated.
But I’m not going to trash a product after a single initial bad experience, and I’m glad I took a moment to be more rigorous about it, because despite the inherent weaknesses of Tetris applied to the wristwatch format, there’s a very clever design hook here to actually render the Tetris My Play Watch effective and its stated purpose of playing Tetris while also being a watch. That’s the puzzle mode. If you’re a Tetris veteran, you’ve probably seen puzzle modes before. These are screens where you need to put down Tetris blocks in a specific order to clear all the lines.
Where the Tetris My Play Watch makes excellent use of the puzzle mode is first just in terms of enhancing general playability. Yes, the normal touchscreen controls are arcane and awful. But because the puzzle screen is static, you’re not time-crunched like you are in marathon mode. It’s easy enough to reset the puzzle. Consequently, puzzle mode becomes a means of practicing the controls. And I was quite surprised to find that after finishing about forty of the watch’s sixty puzzles, I could now play the marathon mode practically error-free, at least in regard to the controls doing what I expected them to.
But this version of Tetris isn’t a perfect recreation, which is actually something to its credit. Instead of the usual 10×20 grid, the My Play Watch used a 7×13 grid. For Tetris gameplay purists, well, you probably were never going to like this watch anyway. For anyone else, just changing these dimensions puts a surprisingly fresh spin on the game. Line blocks, which are typically used vertically in regular Tetris, are often better utilized horizontally on a field this small. This change also greatly impacts the design of the puzzles, which I found to be genuinely impressive brainteasers. Whoever designed them clearly knew what they were doing.
So outside of how well this watch plays Tetris, how is it as a watch? Well, it’s…a watch. Technically a smartwatch, albeit one with no Internet integration that seems to be modeled, if not explicitly built using surplus stock of, fitness watches from the 2010s. In this capacity, the Tetris My Play Watch is just a fitness watch with Tetris skins. They are pretty neat skins, though. Between the nine available faces, there’s quite a bit of variety and optional information to display. The rocket ship face also has a fun secret: every hour it blasts off, which might come in handy if you want an excuse to escape a meeting. Of course, the timer could serve the same purpose, ringing in a Tetris noise that might trick people into thinking it’s a more modern smart watch.
The apps don’t have much Tetris theming, though, which is a little disappointing, although I don’t know how much Tetris theming you could really do with a calculator. My only other real complaint is the lack of a physical manual. It’s definitely an odd philosophical choice to require QR code scanning to find instructions on how to use a device that otherwise prides itself on only doing two things very well. Playing Tetris and working as a watch. And this version of Tetris is unique and accessible enough to actually justify the price tag. I would caution any prospective gift-givers, though, make sure that the recipient knows they need to play puzzle mode before marathon mode, or they’ll probably hate it.
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