Tetris 99 Is A Surprise Battle Royale Game For Nintendo Switch, Out Now

This week's Nintendo Direct had plenty of news, delivering more details on previously announced games and revealing some new ones we had never heard of. Battle royale is of course all the rage, so it doesn't come as a shock to see a new game in the genre following Apex Legends's hot launch, but this one is a genuine surprise. Tetris 99 pits dozens of players against each other--99 of them to be exact, including you--and the winner is the last player standing.

It is free-to-play and is now available to download on the Switch Eshop. You'll need to be a Switch Online subscriber in order to play, as this is an online game. Nintendo says there will be "upcoming online events" to participate in but didn't offer any specific details regarding what those will entail.

Even without those special events, the standard game offers an unusually intense take on Tetris. You play it like the standard version of the game but can designate different targets to essentially attack, filling up their board with extra pieces. While you're laying, you can actually see every other match taking place in the borders of the screen, which is a neat touch. You can get a look at it in action--and see what it's like to win--in the video below.

Tetris is one of the oldest and most venerated game franchises around, and we've recently seen The Tetris Company allowing the classic gameplay to be applied in new ways. Tetris Effect was one of our best games of 2018, and was especially notable for its VR functionality and Rez-like style. Tetris 99 appears to be a similarly experimental take on the classic.