London, United Kingdom – Independent software developer and entrepreneur, Hovik Melikyan today is proud to announce the release of Futuriana 1.0, his new Tetris/Pentix-like puzzle developed for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Futuriana offers 5-cube pieces specifically designed for playing on touch devices. The game is stylized as a vintage computer with a glitchy B&W display to bring a bit of nostalgia to some of us. (The glitches can be disabled in app settings.)

Once a new piece appears, you can touch the display anywhere, then: slide left and right to move the piece, or slide up and down to rotate. You will notice that sliding up-right or down-right rotates the piece in place, while other directions rotate and move the piece simultaneously. To help you visualize how the piece can be moved at any given time, a small “handle” is shown attached to the piece during the touch. To drop the piece, do a short touch. Falling can be stopped by touching again.

In many cases you will be able to move and rotate the current piece in one go, that is, with one gesture. This allows for faster playing compared to other Tetris/Pentix variations. You can flip the interface to play with your other hand, in which case the direction of all gestures is also flipped.

Futuriana is a timed game with level-ups that occur at regular intervals. So it is more beneficial to play as fast as you can at all times. The first three pieces will not move to allow you to practice a bit, but after that, the game will increase the speed every 3 minutes. The maximum speed is 30, i.e. there will be a total of 29 speed increases. If you can sustain the game at the highest speed (can you?), you will be able to play indefinitely. Points are given for landing each piece at lower levels, the lower the better, and when clearing lines. You are rewarded graciously for removing more than one line at a time.

All in all, it is more advantageous to: (1) play as fast as possible at all times, (2) land the pieces as low as possible, i.e. don’t let them pile up, and (3) remove as many lines at a time as possible. The minimum score required to be recorded in the high scores table is 500. Currently the high scores table is stored only locally, though we may add some networking in the future releases.

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
* Requires iOS 9.2 or later
* 3.5 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Futuriana 1.0 is only $0.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Games category.

Futuriana 1.0
Purchase and Download
Screenshot
App Icon

Hovik Melikyan is a Software Engineer, Physicist, Entrepreneur with more than 25 years of multi-disciplinary experience in software, electronics, graphics design and marketing. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2016 Hovik Melikyan. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.