Aside from the hype matches and the parade of traditional fighting games at Evo every year, there's always a game or two that carries the essence of fighting games over into another, seemingly unrelated format. At Evo 2015, that game was Spaera , a crafty mash-up of Tetris and Puzzle Fighter that sports an extra layer or two of tactical consideration. After the show, I got to sit down with Spaera's developer Blazing Orb to get in some matches, and chat with them about what makes Spaera so immediately engaging. Watch my full commentary video with them above, or read on to see why I couldn't stop playing.

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“ You can make your opponent's life hard in a lot of interesting ways.

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The most obvious differentiation from other Tetris battle games is the selection of characters to choose from, and their unique sets of abilities. These aren't just simple add/subtract lines abilities, though there is a little of that. You can make your opponent's life hard in a lot of interesting ways in Spaera. The warrior Pone, for instance, can punch tons of random holes in his opponent's board, making it nearly impossible to form complete lines until they clear it up or build over it. Of course, the ghostly Harland could retaliate with his Phantom Paynes ability, which copies over all but the bottom three lines of his board to his opponent's. Now Pone has to deal with the same problems he just caused.This is easier said than done since the piece queue is shared between players, forcing you to jockey for the best pieces while leaving Spaera's unique five-segment pentaminos for your opponent to deal with. To top it off, many characters have abilities that steal or wipe out an enemy's orbs, so managing this crucial resource is harder than it may initially seem.What's most interesting about Spaera though, is how different abilities inform and change how you approach puzzle mechanics that are, at the end of the day, extremely familiar to most puzzle fans. Going back to Harland for a second, his level 1 ability, Orb Eater, wipes out one orb from his opponent's current stock. Assuming you can keep pace with your foe in terms of orbs, you can always use your orbs to nullify theirs, effectively eliminating ability use from the match, which shifts the focus to playing sound Tetris.On the other hand, with level 2 abilities like Setter Z's Burst Tornado, you can actually completely ignore building a clean, gap-free board because Burst Tornado closes all gaps by pushing every block clean to one side, setting you up perfectly for three and four line clears once the right pieces come down. These variables give rise to lots of interesting, split-second decision making, as well as a variety of long-form, overall strategies.None of this would be any good without a steady stream of human opponents, though the AI put up a fun fight too. Thankfully, with local co-op, as well as smooth GGPO netcode, getting matches is easy, and you can even play the CPU while you wait for a live opponent. Spaera is currently slated for a Holiday 2015 release on PC and Xbox One, but Blazing Orb is trying to get it on as many platforms as possible. For a little while longer, you can download and play the Spaera open beta here

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. F ollow him on Twitter and tell him what you want him to test out next time he plays Street Fighter 5.