"Arraial" is the name given to traditional Portuguese summer celebrations during which people take to the streets eating, drinking, and having fun in the old neighborhoods that are bedecked with arches, colorful balloons, popular music, and the aroma of sweet basil.

Arraial is a tetromino placement game in which players must direct tetromino shapes to the bottom of their personal grids in order to....Look, guys, let's forget the preamble. It's Tetris. It's tabletop Tetris.

The board set up is similar to a cross, with a central rotating board in the middle and four player grids expanding out from each side. Three cards are placed on the central board, each containing a tetromino.

On their turn, a player has three actions to perform, however at least one of those actions must be to place a tetromino at the bottom of their player grid.

The other two actions may be taken up by placing more pieces, or by rotating the board. Players must play the shape into their grid as it sits, so rotating the board becomes essential to direct the shape into the right formation for placement.

Like Tetris, shapes may be moved sideways to connect with other pieces. When two pieces of the same colour meet each other on the player grid, that player takes a meeple of the same colour and places it on their joined tetromino.

Players may also claim the different coloured 'couple' meeples for most spaces covered by joined tetrominoes of the same colour, however, should another player make a larger colour connection on their board, they can claim the couple meeple off the current player.

When a player makes a line, they move their level limit up one row of their grid, and place a white meeple on the level limit tracker. If at any point the level limit touches a tetromino shape, the line and any meeples which have been accumulated are lost.

The game lasts for a total of three phases, with a new phase beginning each time the tetromino card deck becomes depleted. In the third phase, the end game function is activated, and players must use two of their actions to place shapes, instead of one. In the end, the winner is the person who accumulated the most points based on their meeple count.

Now for the life of me, I have no idea why, if you can play actual Tetris on an actual computer, you would decide that a big board game set up is better. I will admit the multiplayer competitive element is perhaps a saving grace for this game's positive qualities, but otherwise, I just don't see the point. Indeed, when Brikks was announced earlier this month, I said much the same thing.

That is not to say there aren't interesting tetromino games out there, and Arraial is artistically very endearing but, personally, it looks like Tetris, and it acts like Tetris, so I'm going to call it Tetris, and I'm probably not going to play it on a tabletop.

Arraial will be releasing at Essen Spiel this weekend and if, unlike me, you see the appeal of tabletop Tetris, you can pick it up there or on the Mebo website.

Do you think tabletop Tetris can ever be better than digital? We want your opinions!