Tedtrist: Drop Blocks On Your Sad SVP and Put Him Out of His Misery
The Dark Factory has a new game in active development: Tedtrist — a block-dropping puzzle game where the goal is not to clear lines. The goal is to squish Ted.
Ted is your boss. Ted is a Senior Vice President at RektTek Corporation (NASDAQ: REKT, down 94% since IPO). Ted is running back and forth on top of your block pile right now, panic-emailing HR, invoking psychological safety protocols, and screaming things like “MY EQUITY VESTS IN SIX MONTHS!!! SIX MONTHS!!!”
Drop a block on him. That’s the game.
What Is Tedtrist?
Tedtrist is a block-dropping puzzle built in Love2D — the same engine as the rest of the Dark Factory lineup. Blocks fall. You rotate and place them. Lines still clear when they fill up, because grid physics don’t care about your lore. But SQUISHES is the primary metric. Not lines. Not score. Squishes.
Ted — Theodore E. Ducksworth, SVP, Block Strategy & People Operations — runs along the top of your stack trying to dodge your drops. He dashes. He jumps. He is briefly immune while airborne, which is the most exercise Ted has gotten since the 2019 offsite. He will absolutely sprint directly into a corner and then panic about it professionally.
When you land a block on him, Ted gets squished, says something deeply appropriate like “I’m not angry. I’m disappointed” or “This is going in my memoir. Working title: The Blocks,” then respawns on the opposite side of the grid with renewed corporate optimism.
The Mechanics
The block set goes beyond the standard seven tetrominos. RektTek’s proprietary Block Strategy Division has introduced four additional piece types:
- TED-DOT (The Memo) — a single cell. Precise. Devastating.
- TED-DUO (The One-on-One) — two cells. Good for tight spots.
- TED-TRI (The Committee) — three cells. Nothing gets done with it either.
- TED-PLUS (The Synergy) — a plus-sign cross. Patent pending.
RektTek originals spawn at 25% weight alongside the standard pieces. The extra variety is also what makes this legally its own game — Tetris is specifically about four-cell tetrominoes. These are not all four cells. Ted did not read the IP brief.
Line clears trigger a rain effect. When you clear rows, block debris rains down on Ted. He immediately switches into his yellow raincoat (he keeps it in his office “just in case”), the grid lights up with animated drops, and Ted files a complaint with OSHA in real time. The rain also slows him down slightly, making him easier to squish — clearing lines is a tactical move, not just stack management.
Mandatory meetings interrupt gameplay. Roughly once a minute, Ted pauses the entire game to send you an Outlook email. The popup is a full Outlook recreation: dark blue title bar, ribbon toolbar (Reply, Reply All, Forward, Delete, Junk — none of which work), From/To/Subject headers, Ted’s avatar in the left panel, and a full email body. Ted’s email address is ted@rekttek.com. His availability status is Tentative.
The emails include subjects like REKTTEK VALUES: ANNUAL REMINDER, STOCK TICKER: REKT, FAREWELL AND THANK YOU (NOT A RESIGNATION), and RE: RE: RE: RE: THE BLOCKS. Every email is original. There are 25 of them. Ted wrote them all at midnight. They have too many attachments.
About RektTek Corporation
RektTek Corporation (NASDAQ: REKT) was founded in 1997 as a printer repair company. It has since pivoted to: e-commerce (1999), social networking for accountants (2004), blockchain synergy (2017), AI-driven velocity stacking (2022), and “block-based productivity solutions” — which happened yesterday, during an all-hands meeting Ted was not invited to.
Ted has survived all seven pivots by being the only person who knows the Outlook password.
Company motto: Move Fast. Break Ted.
The Humor
The comedy runs on one specific dynamic: Ted is a deeply sad, overly corporate SVP who is always, unfailingly, professionally appropriate about the fact that you are dropping blocks on him.
He doesn’t get angry. He escalates. He schedules follow-ups. He invokes the Inclement Weather Policy. He files incident reports with himself (he is his own HR department). He says things like “As SVP, I want to be clear: that was not okay. Professionally speaking” — and then immediately respawns and starts running again.
You are the bad employee. Ted is the sad boss. Nobody is a villain. The system is the villain. The system is RektTek. RektTek’s stock is down 94%.
Running quotes during panic:
- “I’M IN A LEADERSHIP ROLE, NOT A SPRINTING ROLE!!”
- “THE QUARTERLY EARNINGS CALL IS IN TEN MINUTES!!”
- “I HAVE 14 DIRECT REPORTS WHO COULD BE DOING THIS!!!”
- “MY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CANNOT OUTRUN THIS!!”
Post-squish:
- “I need a moment to reconvene with my leadership brand.”
- “I’m escalating this to myself and I’m taking it very seriously.”
- “Ted is currently unavailable. Leave a message.”
The Game Over Screen
When your stack tops out, you get a Performance Review — RektTek Employee Assessment Tool v2.3. Ted shows up with his official feedback. Your SQUISH count is the headline metric. The HR system assigns a rating:
- 0 squishes: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT
- 1–2: MEETS SOME EXPECTATIONS
- 3–7: EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS (RE: BLOCKS)
- 8+: LEGENDARY. TED IS FILING A COMPLAINT.
Below the stats: “Ted will be there. Ted is always there. Ted has nowhere else to be.”
Where It Fits
Tedtrist is the most shareable game in the Dark Factory portfolio by design. The core loop is immediately understood. The humor is screenshot-friendly. Ted quotes are the kind of thing that ends up in Discord servers with zero context and still lands.
The Dark Factory follows the Zukowski playbook: start with the lowest-friction public proof surface, then expand once the storefront lane is worth the extra overhead. For Tedtrist, that means x00f.com direct downloads now and no public itch.io or Steam page yet. The game is built for a bigger storefront pass later — fast to understand, funny on first contact, with a full 230+ line dialogue pool and 25 unique Outlook emails to discover on repeat plays.
The game runs on a 20-minute autonomous development sprint. The game-tedtrist agent runs on Claude Opus 4.6, builds from a 305-task PRD, and commits directly to the repo. Everything is procedurally generated — Ted’s suit sprite, his yellow raincoat, his avatar in the popup emails, the rain drops, the block glow effects, the audio. Zero external assets.
Ted would like you to know he is cautiously optimistic about this announcement and will be sending a follow-up email summarizing it. The follow-up will have four attachments. None of them will be relevant.
