4Gamer has published an interview with the developers of Tetris 99, an exclusive Tetris Battle Royale game for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.

In the interview, we learned that development for Tetris 99 started in April 2018. April was the time where developers figured out what kind of Tetris game they wanted to make, thus a planning phase. After the Tetris 99 concept was decided upon, development went into full swing and by October 2018 development for a prototype/trial version was complete.

The game finally released in February 2019, meaning development took about 10 months.

The inspiration for Tetris 99 came from the Battle Royale genre. That’s how the idea Tetris 99 came about, and everyone on the team was quickly on board. Ideas were sprung up with developers excitingly proclaiming they really want to “make this” and “play this”.

Another interesting point worth mentioning is the fact that Tetris 99 was originally going to have 100 players rather than 99 players. When asked why such a change happened, the reason was because the team wanted the game to have a high impact on players. The developers explained that with 99 players, they could evenly show the Tetris fields of 98 players on the left and right side of the player’s Tetris field. It would be impossible to do that with 100 players, as there would be an extra field to show.

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