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There are three games, or game concepts, that originate from Russia. The first and best known, of course, is Tetris. Then there is Color Lines, which is not as well known, but still very popular. A faithful Windows conversion, Color linez, is constantly among the top twelve downloads, usually on place two or three. Finally there is Filler. Unlike the other two it is known very little. And that is a pity, for as a game concept it is superior to Color Lines. GameplayFiller is the only two-player game of the abovementioned three Russian games. While it is easy to play, the gameplay is a bit difficult to explain. The playing field consists of small, randomly colored diamonds (later variants have replaced this with hexagons or squares). The number of colors can usually be configured, it was seven in the original. The two opponents start in diagonally opposite corners with a random color each. At each turn, they can choose any color except the one the opponent currently has. Any adjacent diamonds are of this color are now part of the player's territory and will be included in the color change next turn. Once a player has conquered more than 50% of the field, he has won and the game is over. The Filler gameplay screenshots show a complete game from start to finish. History
The original Filler was written by Dmitry Pashkov and published by Gamos in 1990. It was a DOS game that ran in hi-res EGA only. It was licensed to Infogrames who sold it in a slightly altered version as 7 Colors, for DOS and Amiga, and sub-licensed it to Hot·B who sold a PC-98 version in Japan. In Italy, Stefano Bellotti wrote a DOS remake under the name 7colors which he later ported to Windows. 
In Russia, the first clone was Lev Possajennikov's Filler for Macintosh in 1992. Three years later Alexander Vikulin started working on a nice Filler for Windows, with eight colors and hexagons instead of diamonds. He developed it up to version 2.01 in June 1996, both 16-bit and 32-bit, but a planned commercial version with super-tough opponent AI never saw the light of day. 
In general, the popularity of Filler has remained restricted to the area of the former Soviet Union. In Kyiv, Ukraine, Dmitriy Iassenev wrote Space Invader, in Belarus Oleg Sergeyev Fillers. A special case is Cameleon by Toni Lönnberg and Jari Komppa, since the authors were not aware of the existence of Filler or 7 Colors and quasi re-invented the game.
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