This Tetris-playing watch struggles with the one thing it should be great at

The Tetris: My Play Watch may look like an Apple Watch, but it eschews most of the functionality you’ll typically find on a smartwatch to focus on two things: playing Tetris and celebrating the game through a UI that’s thoroughly Tetris-themed. It’s very good at making you want to play Alexey Pajitnov’s iconic tetromino-stacking puzzler, just not on the watch because of frustrating touchscreen controls that require more focus than the game itself.

The included straps are colorfully Tetris-themed (you can swap them with standard watch straps if you want to tone it down), as is the collection of nine different faces. There are both digital and analog options with different themes and colors that display a mix of various metrics, including battery life and fitness stats. They all manage to work tetromino pieces and the Tetris logo into their designs, but there’s no customizability.

The watch’s interface is navigated using its touchscreen and a side crown dial that’s pressed or rotated to make selections or to scroll lists. There aren’t any other buttons, but you wouldn’t need them since the watch’s functionality is so limited.

From the main menu, you can play Tetris or use other features that include a stopwatch, timer, calendar, calculator, fitness tracker, and alarm. They’re all very basic. You can set multiple alarms, for example, but you can’t customize when they repeat or choose anything other than the main Tetris theme with gentle vibrations to alert you. Even the Game Boy version of Tetris that launched 36 years ago had alternate themes to choose from.

There’s a heart rate sensor that matched readings from my Apple Watch Series 9, but the other fitness tracking metrics are limited. There’s step counting with an adjustable daily goal and stride length options to improve accuracy, and an estimation of the calories you’ve burned that resets every night. There’s no history, no proactive health warnings, and no notifications at all because the watch lacks Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and doesn’t connect to your smartphone.

It’s an upgrade over a traditional digital watch and could be an option for someone who wants the look of a smartwatch without notifications. But anyone considering spending $79.99 on it is buying it to play Tetris. Unfortunately, it’s not a great implementation.

Previous versions of the My Play Watch used the crown dial to play retro games like Space Invaders and Breakout, but the Tetris version is played only via the touchscreen. When the watch was announced in September, I was worried that touch controls “could prove challenging on a small screen for those chasing high scores,” but it turns out the controls make even just quick play sessions frustrating.

You move pieces by dragging your finger across the screen from side to side, rotate them by tapping, increase their fall rate by tapping and holding, or immediately drop them onto the stack below with a downward swipe. The gestures are easy enough to learn, but I found the watch’s touchscreen would either regularly not detect them or misinterpret what I was doing. Short finger slides meant to reposition a piece by a few cells were frequently detected as a tap, resulting in an unwanted rotation. On more than one occasion, when I quickly tapped in a panic to rotate it back, the watch would interpret the gesture as a downward swipe and drop the piece where I didn’t want it.

There are options in the game’s settings that try to make the touch controls easier to use, including auto-rotate, which predicts the best orientation for a piece based on what’s below it. But accidental spins still happen and often mess up your game. Playing Tetris on the watch isn’t impossible, but because of the frustrating touch controls, I found myself focusing more on carefully executing taps and swipe gestures than any kind of stacking strategy. It increased the challenge, but not in the way any Tetris fan would want.

Equally disappointing is that the control issues I experienced can’t be remedied through software updates, since the watch isn’t capable of getting any. Even something simple, like limiting rotations to taps on the edges of the screen, would help, but it’s a change that can only be implemented in future versions of the watch.

Battery life isn’t great, either. I’m already used to charging my Apple Watch every night, but you need to limit your playtime to get a full day’s use from the Tetris watch. During my first day of testing, I maxed out the brightness and volume, and with less than 15 minutes of playing Tetris, the watch’s battery drained in 6.5 hours. Reducing the brightness to its lowest setting and halving the volume doubled its battery life to about 12 hours. The battery lost about 6 percent of its charge while playing Tetris for five minutes.

I like the idea of a wearable version of Tetris that I can quickly play without distracting notifications. It’s a game that relaxes my brain and is a nice stress reliever, but this version had the opposite effect. You may still be tempted to strap one on if you want the world to know how much you love the game. If you want fun, look elsewhere.