[HN Gopher] Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games
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Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games
Author : juancroldan
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-04-09 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jcarlosroldan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jcarlosroldan.com)
| zavg wrote:
| I like the design of the blog a lot
| qsort wrote:
| The rabbit hole runs much deeper, this is a specification of the
| rotation system for current (modern) Tetris games:
|
| https://harddrop.com/wiki/SRS
|
| The "modern" rules ("guideline", as the community calls them),
| with Hold, 7-bag, multiple previews and a rotation system that
| allows easy T-spins make for more interesting multiplayer games
| that go beyond "who can spam Tetrises the fastest".
| mitsu_at wrote:
| SRS makes it possible to build funky piece elevators:
| https://x.com/sukiyaki_060910/status/1876957439976726658
|
| Also, Yakinery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ1UuE7kV_o
| khqc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYmiQdLuxY
| amichail wrote:
| As you may know, I have been working on DropZap World, a falling
| block game with lasers for many years.
|
| It lies somewhere between Tetris and Candy Crush.
|
| Getting the game mechanics right has been hard and I've tried
| numerous variations on the game rules.
|
| I think I have something that works now.
|
| Check out the beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/CdEXgjst
|
| Any feedback would be appreciated!
| normanthreep wrote:
| yess we know! just this morning i said to my wife "darling i've
| been thinking about dropzap world again," and she said "the
| falling block game with lasers that amichail has been working
| on for many years? me too!"
|
| i said "he thinks he has something that works now" and she
| responded "i know, it's amazing"
|
| of course we know amichail. it's all we're talking about these
| days
| jchw wrote:
| I have a somewhat contrarian opinion. I think if you're making a
| clone of Tetris you should actually take design cues from the
| somewhat more obscure Tetris the Grand Master series instead of
| the "guideline" or NES Tetris rules. TGM's rotation and kick
| rules are a lot more elegant and avoid a lot of unneeded
| complexity. Guideline Tetris kicks let you do absurd and weird
| things (look up the series of kicks that make up a T-Spin Triple
| and see if that makes sense to you) and rewards doing canned
| setups really fast, whereas TGM's game design is all about doing
| good stacking very fast.
|
| The TGM randomization algorithm is also pretty elegant. 7 bag is
| a bit extreme, it gives you such a perfect set of pieces at all
| times that it's genuinely less challenging and fun. TGM's random
| piece algorithm is a lot simpler: the randomizer has a 4-piece
| history window and it tries multiple times (IIRC, 6) to find a
| unique piece that hasn't appeared in that window. It is
| initialized to SSZZ to lower the odds of starting with an S or Z
| early on. (~~They also use the Mersenne Twister as their PRNG,
| which was a pretty good PRNG in an era where many games still
| used LCGs.~~ edit: Apparently, they do not. Don't ask me where I
| got this, I have no idea.)
|
| Now of course I'm not sure if it matters _at all_ for _this_
| particular game since it isn 't really a Tetris clone at all, but
| while TGM is a well-known cult classic for people deep into
| Tetris it's relatively obscure outside of that circle (and
| presumably outside of Japan.) The Tetris Company is very strange
| about licensing and has apparently, as the legend has it, blocked
| and forced changes on TGM releases for a very long time due to
| the fact that it doesn't fit with the Tetris guideline rules they
| enforce in an oddly totalitarian fashion, probably suppressing
| the game even further in an era where speed games and competitive
| gaming is a lot more popular.
| juancroldan wrote:
| Very insightful! the 4-window blacklist is such a good idea. I
| feel like 7-bag is a bit too predictable if you're able to keep
| up with the counting.
|
| And you're right, some of the rotation and kick rules you
| mentioned are actually not changing much in this game because
| there's not a collision between pieces, only overlap: since
| floor kicks and t-spins are not possible, we optimized those
| for simplicity (it's a 48h game jam in PICO-8 after all)
| jchw wrote:
| I tried playing sirtet for a while. That was pretty
| interesting. My brain kept wanting to orient the pieces as if
| I was playing Tetris leading me to occasionally do the
| opposite of what I was intending to do and dig myself into a
| hole both figuratively and literally. I found it pretty
| challenging to figure out a good strategy for stacking; there
| aren't so many lines to work with at once and the constraint
| that the soil has to be connected at all times adds a bit of
| challenge. I couldn't get very far and only managed to clear
| four lines a couple of times. I can definitely say now that I
| don't think 7 bag is a mistake for this. With the added
| challenge, having 7 bag and a hold window is probably a good
| idea.
| qsort wrote:
| I think it depends on what you want to make a clone for.
|
| TGM rules are more elegant and _much_ more challenging for
| single-player tetris, but on the other hand multiplayer and
| especially 1v1 has far greater variety and dynamism with a
| looser rotation system. The stricter the rules, the more it
| becomes spamming tetrises against each other until someone
| misdrops. You have to construct a ruleset where a player who is
| 0.1pps faster doesn 't just autowin.
| jchw wrote:
| I doubt this is going to be a popular opinion, but I honestly
| think Tetris 1v1 just isn't that interesting of a game. The
| interaction between players is pretty damn boring. In
| guideline 1v1 a lot of very high level games are decided by
| garbage RNG which I think is even less interesting than
| determining who is 0.1pps faster. I don't think either
| ruleset is particularly better for either players or people
| watching. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a lot of
| tension in high level game play and so it's not completely
| boring, but to me it starts to get old once you realize
| what's happening, and I haven't really watched any high level
| Tetris stuff in a long time. I have a lot more fun watching
| Classic Tetris World Championship, because as janky as NES
| Tetris is, it's fun to watch people absolutely decimate it.
|
| Now if you want a good multiplayer puzzle game with super
| rich interactions, I think you just simply need a different
| game entirely, because there's no obvious way to weave some
| sort of responsive strategy into a Tetris game. Therefore, my
| pick for the ideal competitive falling blocks puzzle game is
| Puyo Puyo Tsu.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| My dream competitive Tetris game is based on the
| cooperative mode in Tengen Tetris, with two players on the
| same board and separate scores. However, it's a bit hard to
| promote cooperation and not suicide as soon as there's any
| disadvantage. A possible workaround is to have two
| simultaneous 1v1 games (same seed), and count all four
| scores independently.
| NauticalStu wrote:
| TGM actually has a pretty interesting 1v1 system. I wish it
| was more popular.
|
| Most other Tetris games (all that I've played, at least)
| throw randomized garbage at the opponent. It scales with
| the number of lines you clear, but it always has a one
| column gap in a random position, no control over that.
|
| But TGM's garbage is deterministic. Basically, imagine
| taking the lines you just cleared, but remove the piece
| that completed them. That missing piece will be the gap.
| Flip what's left upside down and add it to the bottom of
| your opponent's stack.
|
| Now you have full control over the position and shape of
| the garbage you send!
|
| This adds a nice layer of strategy and makes the game feel
| more interactive since you need to constantly watch your
| opponent's stack and act accordingly. You want to add
| garbage where your opponent will struggle to clear it while
| also being on the lookout for what kind of garbage they'll
| be sending you and try to play around it.
|
| And there are powerup items to spice things up, which
| admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very
| swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows
| players of different skill levels to play together
| (although the stronger player will still win most games),
| as well as just add some exciting or funny turnarounds.
| There's also a timing element to triggering the items,
| which adds even more strategy.
|
| https://tetris.wiki/TGM_Versus_Mode_Guide
| jchw wrote:
| I absolutely do think TGM versus mode is interesting. I'm
| not sure how to feel about it, but the lack of random
| garbage is a very big plus.
|
| > And there are powerup items to spice things up, which
| admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very
| swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows
| players of different skill levels to play together
| (although the stronger player will still win most games),
|
| This seems to be a tricky thing to balance in competitive
| games. It's boring if the more skilled player wins every
| single match even in fairly close matchups, but it's also
| frustrating if any specific win/loss is dictated
| specifically by random chance or "unfair" game mechanics.
| This seems to essentially force game design to go a
| little off the path and overcomplicate things a little to
| try to make the game more interesting.
|
| I strongly recommend taking a look at Puyo Puyo
| (particularly Tsu) if you are a competitive puzzle game
| enjoyer. It is a seriously good multiplayer puzzle game.
| Where Tetris is an excellent single player game and a
| good multiplayer game, Puyo Puyo is an excellent multi
| player game. You can see the game design issues play out
| especially over the early iterations of it; they pretty
| much nail the formula in Tsu, so most of the changes from
| thereon just kind of add additional complications that
| can make the game a bit more interesting and add some
| ways that someone can feasibly win a match against a
| better opponent.
|
| Among the many puzzle games people play somewhat
| competitively (Tetris, Panel de Pon, Dr. Mario even,) I
| think Puyo Puyo is the one that deserves much more
| attention. Not that I think the game design behind Tetris
| multiplayer shouldn't be iterated on, but after seeing
| and studying high level Puyo Puyo play, it just makes it
| feel like Tetris multiplayer will never be able to have
| the same amount of depth. Of course, it's still plenty
| enjoyable, especially if you are playing Tetris
| multiplayer somewhat more casually. I definitely used to
| play a lot of online Tetris with friends. (Also, although
| it wasn't something I played a whole ton, I did spend a
| few hours on Tetris 99. I wasn't really the greatest at
| it because I'm just not that good at spamming setups but
| I was able to net a few wins.)
| NauticalStu wrote:
| Yeah, 1v1 TGM didn't leave a good first impression on me
| because the items seemed wild and gimmicky, something
| designed for casual play, not competitive. But I
| eventually came around, mostly after finding out how the
| garbage system works. I've played quite of bit of TGM2 on
| Fightcade, and while some individual games come down to
| item craziness, usually people play FT3 or FT5 matches,
| where the luck of a single game usually doesn't decide
| the match (and if it did, it was a close match
| otherwise). I like the tension and surprises that items
| can add, even if it comes at the cost of balance
| sometimes.
|
| I played a decent amount of Puyo Puyo back in the day
| (mostly Tsu), but lost interest for two reasons:
|
| 1.) I had nobody to play against, and the AI in the old
| games wasn't very good. Neither of these are issues now
| though, with online play and much better AI.
|
| 2.) I could never get past the beginner phase. Making 4-5
| chains really fast was usually good enough to beat the AI
| in the old versions, so I stagnated there. But that
| doesn't work against modern AI, and certainly not against
| humans. But I had no idea how to make the jump from
| beginner to intermediate; strategy just felt
| fundamentally different, and hard for me to figure out.
| Maybe I just never found good resources for learning that
| (this was 20+ years ago, probably much more out there
| now).
|
| But yeah, it's a shame it never really took off in the
| west. Highly underrated game.
| jchw wrote:
| Honestly that is probably the one big fault of Puyo Puyo:
| Puyo Puyo Tsu (and onward) has an obscenely challenging
| learning curve which will undoubtedly have one plateauing
| a lot. If you want to be able to make larger chains you
| need to learn how to build transitions. But if you want
| to build large chains in actual matches with an opponent
| who is good enough to watch your board, you also need to
| be able to build transitions safely and efficiently,
| which is why a lot of people do GTR as soon as possible.
| It took me a few years to get to a point where I felt
| basically just mediocre, and then I plateaued hard. To
| get better I'd undoubtedly need to hone my muscle memory
| for how to more efficiently use pieces and build more
| parts of the chain at once without breaking it or leaving
| myself vulnerable. I don't think I'll ever be all that
| great, but it was a lot of fun.
| isotypic wrote:
| > In guideline 1v1 a lot of very high level games are
| decided by garbage RNG which I think is even less
| interesting than determining who is 0.1pps faster.
|
| I have played a lot of (moderately high level) 1v1 tetris
| and I would have to disagree. In fact I often felt that the
| reverse is true - if I felt I died to garbage hole RNG,
| really that meant I was getting out pressured and would
| have lost eventually anyways. And while my playstyle was
| more aggressive, try to out speed opponent, I lost my fair
| share of games to people playing (much) slower but just
| incredibly efficient.
|
| I agree there is an overall disappointing amount of
| interaction between players, though. Watching your
| opponents board and adjusting to it is hard and takes a
| while to build the skill to do. And a lot of the times you
| can just get away with it by playing faster and out
| pressuring and ignoring the other player.
| jchw wrote:
| > I have played a lot of (moderately high level) 1v1
| tetris and I would have to disagree. In fact I often felt
| that the reverse is true - if I felt I died to garbage
| hole RNG, really that meant I was getting out pressured
| and would have lost eventually anyways.
|
| To be honest, I was never good enough for it to be a big
| issue, but it does seem apparent to me that it is an
| issue for the highest level players. I could be wrong, of
| course, but assuming I'm not, I think this brings up an
| interesting question: if it's something that you have to
| be so good at the game to have impact you meaningfully,
| does it really matter for 99.9% of players including
| myself who will certainly never get there? I guess the
| answer is probably not, but it does have a psychological
| impact of sorts. It definitely can make tournament
| outcomes feel less interesting.
|
| So really random garbage just irks me because it seems
| like an unnecessary addition of RNG into an otherwise
| skilled game. I don't think random garbage is more fun
| than deterministic garbage schemes. I would suppose some
| people disagree.
|
| The lack of serious interaction and a deep meta game,
| though... That's a bigger problem, yeah. I am not sure
| you can fix that while still producing something that you
| can really call "Tetris".
|
| (And even when Nintendo called "Panel de Pon" "Tetris
| Attack" outside of Japan, I don't think it wound up
| having a terribly interesting interaction between
| players, either, despite being an entirely different game
| from the ground up! Still pretty fun though.)
| danbolt wrote:
| Watching two people who know how to play _Puyo Puyo Tsuu_
| and when to reflect or cancel out the garbage blocks is
| incredibly dynamic.
|
| It's a bit of a shame Sega/Nintendo chose to localize the
| first game in the series rather than the sequel with the
| updated rules.
| mitsu_at wrote:
| One example of the kind of mind games that can happen
| between top level Puyo Puyo players:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjeNJcCfHpo
| Dwedit wrote:
| I watched enough Tetris 99 streamers to know the basic
| strategy, you 4-wide when on defense, and T-spin/Tetris when
| on offense.
| Arcorann wrote:
| Have you looked at TGM4, which released on Steam last week? [0]
| I'd be interested to see your thoughts on it.
|
| Also would like to note that, at least for TGM1, 2 and 3, the
| PRNG used is a 32-bit LCG (the common C one, in fact).
|
| [0]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3328480/TETRIS_THE_GRAND_...
| jchw wrote:
| I haven't had a chance to check it out. I definitely intend
| to.
|
| > Also would like to note that, at least for TGM1, 2 and 3,
| the PRNG used is a 32-bit LCG (the common C one, in fact).
|
| Oops. It seems I have manufactured some false memories.
| ambyra wrote:
| The rules make it so every new tetris release is just a boring
| clone. TGM has to fight for innovation, really sad. When I made
| my four player variant, https://duo.itch.io/reaktor I made sure
| to follow NONE of the guideline rules, and it ended up being a
| breath of fresh air for a lot of people.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1fdzcsc/how_i_publ...
| DadBase wrote:
| I still think the cleanest rotation system was when we mapped
| tetromino states to hardware interrupts. You'd get instant
| kicks, but if the stack got too high you'd risk a race
| condition that hard-locked the framebuffer. Not elegant, but
| very motivating for clean stacking.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Ah, Tetris. I remember stripping out the copy protection from the
| MSDOS version with a debugger. Not because I wanted to resell it,
| which would have been difficult back then, just because I found
| it irritating.
|
| I also added mouse support, once again using a debugger, for
| Hercules Graphics to a wargame - it was the ever popular Battle
| of the Bulge, by a famous designer who's name I can't remember.
| Guy that did Eastern Front on the Atari.
|
| Edit: Chris Crawford
| euroderf wrote:
| Did you also remove the copy protection ? What is the third
| word in the second paragraph on page 37...
| franze wrote:
| i created a not tetris clone here
| https://ihopethisisfun.franzai.com/ (not tetris in a flipping /
| rotating board with vertical lines also possible) and I learned
| more about the SRS (super rotating system) then i ever wanted to
| know, think it is still off and i might give it another try soon
| iNic wrote:
| People who want play tetris _fast_ (on places like jstrs) will
| prefer the "real" rotation to the "NES" rotation, because it
| allows you to place pieces with fewer button presses.
|
| To explain why check out this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QBs703nOnk&t=502s
| jstanley wrote:
| > Before we implemented this, we played entire games with not a
| single stick piece in over 100 pieces
|
| Are you sure there wasn't some other bug? There's a 6/7 chance of
| not getting a stick piece, which means for 100 pieces in a row
| there's (6/7)^100 = about 1 in 5 million.
| juancroldan wrote:
| There's a non-zero chance that it was around 30 pieces and we
| felt it like 100. Our quick testing the game for the jam was
| not very scientific. I just changed it to "~30"
| inputvolch wrote:
| Well it's a good thing you exuded such a confident number in
| the article to make your point when you very well knew it was
| completely made up. Definitely gives the reader confidence
| that the rest of the article is completely true!
| ziddoap wrote:
| This is a ~400 word blog about tetris, not a research paper
| about curing cancer. Maybe some slack can be afforded?
| taneq wrote:
| Unless they weren't seeding their RNG, which means every game
| could be the same.
| juancroldan wrote:
| PICO-8 initializes it for you upon loading the game
| throw10920 wrote:
| I really like the implied general principle of the wall kick - if
| the user tries to do an action in a state that doesn't allow it,
| if there's something that's useful and pretty close, do that
| instead.
|
| For instance, I'm building a tree editor with vim movement keys,
| and I found that a "j" that brings me up to the first child _or_
| next sibling node is strictly more useful than a "j" that only
| descends to children and a "l" that only goes to the next
| sibling.
|
| Obviously, you have to be very careful to avoid introducing
| footguns, but the idea of "don't dogmatically adhere to operation
| semantics" is good.
| munificent wrote:
| This is, I think, one of the deepest arts in user experience
| design. It comes up in games, but I find myself applying it all
| the time when designing a programming language too.
|
| A human sitting at a machine and pushing buttons is expressing
| some sort of _intention_. When the machine can do exactly what
| they requested, easy, do that.
|
| But what happens if their intentions don't seem to make sense
| given the current state of the system and/or their previously
| indicated intentions?
|
| In the context of Tetris, it's them trying to rotate a piece
| when they've moved it too close to the wall to do that. In a
| programming language, it can be that they've defined a function
| that's declared to take a string and then they wrote a call
| that passes it a number.
|
| Sometimes, you can make a pretty confident guess as to what
| they are trying to do and have the system either do that
| instead or at least use that assumption to explain why the
| system can't do what they requested.
|
| But deciding when a guess is a safe bet for the system to make
| and when it will be wrong often enough to confuse users is
| _really hard_ , especially as the complexity of the system and
| the diversity of the userbase scales up.
| curiouser3 wrote:
| Apotris (https://akouzoukos.com/apotris), a GBA "demake" of
| tetris is one of the cooler ones I've seen with regard to QOL.
| Lots of settings for tweaking controls and sensitivity that make
| it possible to fine tune the game to just feel fantastic to play
| Dwedit wrote:
| There is also "Tetanus On Drugs" on GBA (later renamed Lockjaw:
| The Overdose), which uses Mode 7-style distortions to simulate
| the experience of playing Tetris under the influence. I'm not
| 100% sure of which rule set it uses, but it does have hold
| pieces and delayed piece locking at the bottom.
| isolli wrote:
| Side question: how can I introduce my son to the joys of Tetris?
| Is there a good game available somewhere currently? I tried to
| find one for the iPad, but came up empty-handed.
| wwarren wrote:
| For iPad maybe try Delta emulator and the NES version of Tetris
| dharmab wrote:
| My favorite tetris game is Tetris Effect. It has really awesome
| music and graphics.
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