Play Klax Online

Summary

Klax drops a steady stream of colored tiles onto a conveyor belt, and I steer a small paddle left or right to snatch them. The paddle can hold up to five tiles, and a single button drops the topmost piece into a 5‑by‑5 well below. Align three matching colors in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line—called a "Klax"—and the tiles vanish, letting anything above fall into place. Bonus points rain in when a single drop completes multiple lines or when falling tiles finish a Klax on their own.

The game is organized into 100 waves, grouped in sets of five. After each fifth wave the drop meter resets and I’m offered three future waves to choose from; picking a later wave nets extra points but also more drops. Each wave carries its own objective—score a target, create a set number of Klaxs, or simply survive a tile onslaught. The round ends with bonuses for any tiles left on the conveyor, paddle, or empty slots in the well, and the session ends when drops run out, the well fills, or all waves are cleared.

Dave Akers cranked out the original code in just a few weeks, starting in AmigaBASIC before porting to C, citing Tetris and tic‑tac‑toe as inspirations. The title itself comes from the clacking sound the tiles make. Critics took note: the Parents’ Choice seal, a Best Mind Game award in Europe, and a nod from the Chicago Tribune as the best cartridge of 1990, while IGN later placed Klax at #44 on its Top 100 NES Games list.