Yahoo! Towers

Well, I've taken a sick day from school, and I thought I could catch up on some casual gaming to make me feel better.

Today I revisited a game that I like to play once in awhile - Yahoo! Towers. It's Tetris-like in the fact that there are shapes that fall which the user can rotate, and that it is totally addictive, however it is completely different in all other aspects.

Game Play

First of all, it is a multiplayer game - at least two people, but up to eight people, must face-off against each other. If there is someone playing directly beside you, they are your partner and can help you out.

There are rectangular shapes, made up of 3 separate square blocks which fall. These blocks can be 6 different colours (grey, green, blue, purple, yellow or orange). The player can rotate the order of the blocks, but the rectangle always stays vertical.


The goal of the game is to force your opponent(s) to fill up their screen with blocks while keeping your screen clear. You do this by placing your blocks into colour-groups of 3 in order to clear them. They can be grouped vertically, horizonally or diagonally. If you have a partner, you can clear blocks across BOTH of your play areas (e.g. if you have a blue block on the far right side of your screen and your partner has 2 blue blocks on the far left of their screen, and they touch, all 3 will clear). There are also special blocks which can attack your opponent(s) or help you (or your partner). Blocks that rotate come to your defense, while blocks that have sparks attack others.

The blocks also have letters on them that spell Y-A-H-O-O-! There are more advanced things the player can do with the letters (i.e. if you spell YAHOO! with your blocks and break 3 more right after, bad things happen to your opponent(s).)

Controls

The controls of the game are quite simple: use your arrow keys to move / rotate blocks and your space bar to use special blocks (attack / defense). For more advanced game play, you can target specific people by pressing their number (you and your partner would have numbers 1 and 2).

Try it out!

It might seem a bit complicated at first, but that is one great thing about this game: you can build up your knowledge of how to play slowly. At the very least, all you have to remember is how to rotate / move blocks and to smash the space bar when you collect special blocks.

You have to have a Yahoo! account to play, but its totally worth it since I only use mine to play this game.