[HN Gopher] Show HN: Lazy Tetris
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Show HN: Lazy Tetris
I made a tetris variant Aims to remove all stress, and focus the
game on what I like the best - stacking. No timer, no score, no
gravity. Move to the next piece when you are ready, and clear lines
when you are ready. Separate mobile + desktop controls
Author : admtal
Score : 286 points
Date : 2025-05-27 03:58 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lazytetris.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lazytetris.com)
| sherdil2022 wrote:
| It is good but not intuitive. Also the line doesn't clear when
| all tiles in the row are filled. It is good to show the shadow of
| the piece where it would fall - at least as an option.
| admtal wrote:
| You gotta press "clear" to Clear the rows
|
| And you can click the "ghost" icon to get the shadow piece.
|
| You're absolutely right, not intuitive
| vunderba wrote:
| Nice job. Add in some Nintendo Wii lobby style music to give it
| that extra chill vibe.
|
| FWIW, you can also do this on TETR.IO in Zen mode - just set the
| Gravity to 0 and turn Leveling off.
| irjustin wrote:
| Still managed to kill myself trying to do a "full screen" tetris.
| Somehow I always end up finding ways to add the stress back in.
| em-bee wrote:
| why is that stressful? i find a puzzle like figuring out how to
| fill the screen fun and relaxing.
|
| i'd like to see a few improvements for that though:
|
| don't end the game just because a piece touches the top row.
| allow to continue playing as long as there is room for more
| pieces to be placed. (i just noticed that doesn't happen all
| the time. maybe only when the next piece doesn't fit into the
| spot to be placed)
|
| but even if there is no more room, don't end the game when
| there are rows that still can be cleared. the game should only
| end when no other action is possible. and ideally, don't
| automatically clear the field when the game ends. let me admire
| the result, and add a reset button to clear manually instead.
|
| other features that could be nice: when starting over the hold
| should probably be cleared. a bigger hold would also be nice.
| and how about a score? relaxing doesn't mean it can't be
| competitive. i mean we all experience stress differently. i
| find being pressured for time to be stressful, but i don't mind
| a hard puzzle as long as i have time to solve it and am not
| losing progress when i make a mistake.
|
| i managed to fill 17 rows without clearing any before the game
| ended. can anyone beat that? you'd have to be very lucky with
| the pieces you get at the end :-)
| op00to wrote:
| Somehow this is an apt metaphor for life.
| ggoo wrote:
| I would recommend renaming this project to not include the t
| word.
| wvbdmp wrote:
| This is a great idea and I love it but somehow I'm randomly
| having issues hitting the Drop button, which make this unbearably
| stressful/frustrating. (iPhone SE)
| admtal wrote:
| Does the two finger tap work?
| geon wrote:
| Yes
| sali0 wrote:
| I love this, spent more time on it than i thought i would. You
| should make this into a native mobile game.
| cube00 wrote:
| This kind of simple game feels like it would be perfect to
| remain web/PWA based, what benefits do you foresee in a native
| mobile version?
| sali0 wrote:
| Would be nice to pop it up on the phone via an app. PWA would
| also be nice.
|
| But main reason is so he can monetize. Would gladly pay a few
| dollars for this.
| solumunus wrote:
| Monetisation.
| johnisgood wrote:
| With screen blocking ads popping up every 5 seconds? :D
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| With 'several' X's on the ads....to make closing them a
| 'game'.
| hansmayer wrote:
| Awesome stuff, but have you considered adding an MCP interface so
| that an AI can play it instead of us :) :)
| falcor84 wrote:
| I know you're being facetious, but you can use the
| Puppeteer/Playwright MCP.
| hansmayer wrote:
| I wasn't actually aware there as Playwright MCP. Well then,
| maybe we should have a go at it :)
| metayrnc wrote:
| Wow this is such a great idea. Also the controls on mobile were
| top notch. No issues with random zooming, text selection, weird
| scrolling etc. Felt like a downloaded app.
| SaturateDK wrote:
| Seems to be down currently.
| admtal wrote:
| Hoping the Netlify free tier holds up, wasn't expecting front
| page
| bemmu wrote:
| This is like Tetris with creative mode.
| alana314 wrote:
| Fun! Can we get a keyboard shortcut for clear?
| admtal wrote:
| That is such a good idea, I'll prob add tomorrow
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| What if you start at a reasonably easy gravity but progressively
| ease up on it so things get slower and theres a baseline to move
| down from rather than it always being free and easy
| geon wrote:
| Cool.
|
| The drag gesture is slightly broken though. If the piece collides
| with the wall, it sticks instead of sliding.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Played for a little while and didn't get a single L piece. I'm
| guessing you're picking pieces randomly?
|
| If you wanted to further reduce the stress then you could use the
| single bag system (same link as below, bottom of the page).
|
| [1] https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Tetris/Pieces#L_piece
| admtal wrote:
| Fantastic idea, thank you for sharing, will add multi bag
| yreg wrote:
| I had the same with an eye piece and I stubbornly continued
| building rows with single tile gap. It was so satisfying to get
| the I pieces in the end and finish it!
| abcd_f wrote:
| That's how you get the "tetris" score - by completing 4 row
| at once.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Your stuff is very fun. Look at this, this crazy little thing (by
| same person): https://passwordbasket.com :)
| izietto wrote:
| I laughed so hard I'm worried I bothered my neighbours!!! This
| is terrific!!!
| admtal wrote:
| Thank you so much, that is all I want to hear in the world
| airstrike wrote:
| It genuinely made me smile!
| hoosieree wrote:
| I never before considered that a password generator could be
| fun. My mind has been changed. Now I believe they _should_ be
| fun.
| simlevesque wrote:
| That just put a smile on my face.
| raydev wrote:
| I was shocked by how hard I laughed when I "generated" the
| password. Great work.
| redbell wrote:
| Cool, and it might be cooler if the generated password's
| characters go straight to the basket. Just my two cents.
|
| Also, this reminds me of _The Password Game_ :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36493715
| darkwater wrote:
| Cool idea!
|
| Playing on desktop with a keyboard, I cannot move pieces up when
| they reached the floor, though. I moved one piece down too much
| thinking it was possible to move it up again and that caused me
| to stress a bit ;)
| admtal wrote:
| On desktop you can click and drag
| lynx97 wrote:
| While we are at unconventional tetris implementations: I wrote a
| cosmopolitan libc based tetris clone for Braille display users.
| IOW, pieces "fall" horizontally, and blocks are rendered with
| (unicode) braille.
|
| https://github.com/mlang/betris
|
| Big thanks to @jart, cosmo is a godsent for cross-platform TUI
| stuff.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I made one once which was just like normal Tetris, but you
| could fight against gravity and move the pieces upwards. It
| actually doesn't change the gameplay that much, because
| eventually you progress far enough that you just can't push
| 'up' fast enough, and gravity wins.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >but you could fight against gravity and move the pieces
| upwards
|
| I love that idea, sometimes you just need a little time to
| figure out where you want to move/rotate it to.
| bramvanleur wrote:
| It would be great if undo would make the piece appear at the spot
| I dropped it from. So I can correct mistakes by "undo", "left",
| "drop".
|
| But what I am really looking for in Tetris is the game to train
| me. After observing me play for a few minutes it tells me: _"Hey,
| I notice you always deal with L pieces horizontally. Proffesional
| players usually prefer to X so they can achieve Y"_
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| AI Tetris?
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Tetris the Grand Master 4 (that has been released recently on
| Steam) has a training mode that suggest to you where to place
| you pieces. You can even select different goal for the CPU
| (survival, make as much Tetris as possible, make as much T-spin
| as possible, ...). Of course when it gets fast your brain
| cannot process the suggest and it's kinda useless, but it's a
| good first step. Also the fundamentals of Tetris are simple to
| recite: maximize your piece placement possibilities / minimize
| your piece dependencies, avoid overstacking over holes, be
| mindful of your piece mobility; this can boils down to "play
| flat but not too much".
| jorisboris wrote:
| This was quite fun!
| aronhegedus wrote:
| I randomly got 4 line pieces at the start, thought this was going
| to be a line piece only Tetris variant :D
| lorikmor wrote:
| I played it and thought it was dumb initially but then I loved
| the way it was not stressing me. Interesting concept
| filt wrote:
| Nice! But a ghost piece would be helpful!
| francislavoie wrote:
| There is one, there's a toggle for it on the right
| xnickb wrote:
| As someone who tried to be good at tetris but has failed
| miserably, this has potential to be a good tool to practice
| lookahead. Of course for that one'd need to have an option to see
| next N pieces in the queue.
|
| But it's indeed a nice and relaxed take on tetris.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I laughed out like crazy for minutes on reading the title. I had
| to re-visit one of my regular saying and I thought that was cool
| but it ain't no more, "Business is Chess, and Life is Tetris."
|
| I'm going to move the first piece down sometime soon.
| albert_e wrote:
| I love this. Thanks.
| jsheard wrote:
| Just a word of warning, the Tetris Company is pretty aggressive
| about protecting their trademarks. I'd at least pick a different
| name, but sometimes they even go after Tetris clones which _don
| 't_ use the name (e.g. Apotris).
|
| https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/adcac3eddac2e5555d87942d...
| franze wrote:
| Thats why I never mention the T word once on my variation
| https://ihopethisisfun.franzai.com/
| rplnt wrote:
| What they go after is not just the name, but the shapes. But
| I think you are fine as long as you do not monetize or get
| popular.
| GolDDranks wrote:
| Which is crazy, because the shapes are just an idea, and
| you can't copyright ideas. They also couldn't be a
| trademark infringement (IANAL, though) if you don't use
| them in your branding.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Trying to copyright shapes or blocks of various shapes is
| wild to me.
| rplnt wrote:
| They don't claim copyright on the mechanics. They pursue
| trademark violation. If it has falling tetrominos, it
| might be confused with Tetris, is the idea. You can use
| different shapes and be fine.
| nashashmi wrote:
| It is the series of shapes in one project that makes it
| Tetris. So think of it as a series of copied ideas in one
| product that make it a legal challenge
| silveira wrote:
| The shapes are called tetrominos, four squares connected
| orthogonally. Tetris the game, was created with pentominoes
| (5 squares) and scaled down to tetrominos. The game was
| inspired by physical puzzles where fill a rectangle with
| the shapes. So these shapes existed before Tetris.
|
| Would they go after the shapes? Possibly. See "Tetris
| Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc.".
| rplnt wrote:
| One I remember is Blockles by OMGPop, which was a great
| multiplayer tetris-inspired game. There was legal threat,
| and they took it down in 2009.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| The Tetris mark as a whole has an amazing history. It's a mark
| that was created from the ashes of a state that didn't allow
| trade and was involved in conflict and is kind of a marvel at
| the amount of cooperation that needs to happen for something
| like this. It's basically all edge cases.
|
| Going after "clones" that have similar gameplay is wrong and
| they should (and likely do) know better. This has been resolved
| with Hasbro in the past as they were very litigious and went
| after clones of their games like Scrabble claiming their patent
| (and other parts) extended to the gameplay elements etc. IIRC
| the court rejected that argument and said that they can
| copyright or trademark the color combinations, names of points,
| etc. but they cannot patent the fundamental scrabble gameplay
| etc.
| jsheard wrote:
| AIUI it's some weird legal sleight of hand where they don't
| (and can't) actually own the Tetris gameplay mechanics, but
| they have successfully argued in court that the _appearance_
| of the game constitutes their trade dress, and in practice
| you can 't really implement the Tetris mechanics without the
| result looking like Tetris.
|
| TTC is the gaming version of Oracle in that one meme[1], 90%
| of their raison d'etre is just to scare people away from
| making Tetris clones or variants without their permission so
| they can keep collecting rent on it forever.
|
| [1] https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-
| big...
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I've always loved this image set. I have a feeling it's
| very different in 2025 though; would love to hear what
| current or very recent employees at these companies think
| teddyh wrote:
| > _TTC is the gaming version of Oracle in that one meme_
|
| Link to the original artist instead of blogspam:
| <https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts>
| jsheard wrote:
| Thanks, I thought the source had link-rotted but their
| server is just misconfigured (it looks like they switched
| from the www subdomain to a naked domain, but didn't set
| up a redirect, so old www links just throw an error).
| wgjordan wrote:
| Not just 'Tetris' (and *-'tris') trademark and Lanham Act
| trade dress, but they have also successfully argued in
| court [1] that the 'look and feel' of Tetris constitutes
| its copyrighted expression. In that case, Tetris Holding
| argued (and the judge agreed) that even the use of the
| seven one-sided tetromino playing pieces was part of their
| copyright.
|
| Here's the description of the only Tetris gameplay
| mechanics the judge in this case conceded cannot be
| protected:
|
| > Tetris is a puzzle game where a user manipulates pieces
| composed of square blocks, each made into a different
| geometric shape, that fall from the top of the game board
| to the bottom where the pieces accumulate. The user is
| given a new piece after the current one reaches the bottom
| of the available game space. While a piece is falling, the
| user rotates it in order to fit it in with the accumulated
| pieces. The object of the puzzle is to fill all spaces
| along a horizontal line. If that is accomplished, the line
| is erased, points are earned, and more of the game board is
| available for play. But if the pieces accumulate and reach
| the top of the screen, then the game is over. These then
| are the general, abstract ideas underlying Tetris and
| cannot be protected by copyright nor can expressive
| elements that are inseparable from them.
|
| [1] Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. (2012) htt
| ps://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=180648822600252..
| .
| jwrallie wrote:
| That's sad to hear about, I understand why they did it, but I'm
| sure everyone that cared will be hesitant to ever spend
| anything on their trademark.
| Charon77 wrote:
| There's a bug where the ghost doesn't update its position after
| clearing.
| stevage wrote:
| "lazy" doesn't feel like the right name. More like low stress. I
| really enjoyed it.
| didSspin wrote:
| After fiddling around for 3 minutes, I managed to do an illegal L
| spin.
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| I still suck at it
| Arcorann wrote:
| Neat. However, I noticed that the page description reads "No
| stress, memory-optimized 3D Tetris variant.", but I can't figure
| out what's supposed to be 3D about it.
| admtal wrote:
| Ha, I missed that. The AI prob wrote that. It thinks it's 3D
| because it's using the three JS library and I was asking for
| performance optimization ideas
| leansh wrote:
| Thanks for this, another feature I generally like is showing a
| shadow where the piece will end up
| op00to wrote:
| This is awesome! Love the idea. Great work.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Lazy Tetris is definitely my game! : )
| the_af wrote:
| Was this vibe coded with AI? Based on one of your replies here,
| and your post history, I think it is.
|
| I also think some of your comments here are also AI-generated,
| e.g. this one where you both posted a submission and asked
| yourself to "stop posting AI generated garbage":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36841921
| admtal wrote:
| Yup, vibe coded with rosebud ai from my phone, and some ChatGPT
|
| I swear I can code for real, I was just having fun
| the_af wrote:
| Can you explain this comment you posted a while back, on your
| own HN submission (you talking to yourself?):
|
| > _" Adam, congrats on your book, but please stop spamming
| this message board with your AI Generated garbage"_
|
| Note if the above sounds aggressive, _I_ didn 't write it.
| You did... in reply to yourself! To be honest it seems as if
| you're writing comments using an LLM, and the LLM got
| confused.
| ilker2495 wrote:
| Great idea, played until I got a fullscreen clear, I really like
| it but the single rotation key is annoying, I suggest having
| separate clockwise/counter-clockwise keys. Also single bag
| randomization algorithm please (look up 7-bag, 7BR), bag makes
| even NES Tetris super chill since you never get overwhelmed or
| left waiting for a long piece. Another suggestion is to add a
| "ghost piece". Basically a display for where the piece is going
| to end up if you hit drop. Others in this thread are right. You
| should avoid the "-tris". My favourite Tetris clone calls itself
| "Shiromino" for example. Maybe "Slo'mino" to emphasize the
| slowness of it, or something like that, I'm sure you can come up
| with a way better name. I don't mean to be overbearing this is a
| very fun idea and I enjoyed my time with it!
| heisenbit wrote:
| I prefered moving the piece down into the right place. I found it
| a bit annoying and also not intuitive to have to press ,drop' for
| a piece which was down already and which i released. Would be
| nice if it auto-dropped on drag release when at the bottom.
|
| Last but not least: Fun and relaxing.
| tantalor wrote:
| Feature request: to make it even _lazier_ show a preview of where
| the piece is going to end up when it lands, like a ghost image
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| There is a ghost toggle on the right side.
| tianqi wrote:
| Me tried the first minute: this guy missed everything about game
| design.
|
| Me after 1.5 hours and wondered why hadn't stopped: I know
| nothing about game design.
| admtal wrote:
| This made my wife and I laugh
| admtal wrote:
| Thank you all for playing and leaving such great suggestions and
| comments!!
|
| I will likely add many of these suggestions over the weekend.
|
| - Multi bag instead of fully random
|
| - No auto clear on game end
|
| - Clear hold on game reset
|
| - Rename to LAZY PUBLIC DOMAIN BLOCK GAME
|
| also, I need better UX or something, because some of the
| suggestions are already implemented but it's prob not initiative/
| hard to find.
|
| Clicking on the ghost enables the ghost piece. I personally hate
| ghost pieces, and I always disable them, so because it's my game,
| I have it off by default.
|
| Tapping left side and right side rotate left and right.
|
| Keyboard Up and Shift rotate left and right.
|
| Delete key does UNDO
|
| Enter does HOLD
|
| You can touch drag or click drag to move your piece, even
| dragging up.
|
| Oh, also you can drag from anywhere, you don't have to actually
| click the piece.
|
| You can two-finger tap to DROP (that's how I play, it's so
| satisfying)
|
| Three-finger-tap is HOLD
|
| You can save to home screen on iOS and it should play as a full
| screen app.
|
| If you get a "Tetris" (four line clear at once) a secret gift
| button appears, but it's just a link to my book, because
| everything I do is soulless cash grab.
|
| I'm lazy, and built this game sitting on the couch on my phone
| using a mix of rosebud.ai and ChatGPT. I also had to get in my
| laptop to do performance optimizations manually, that part
| sucked, it was like real work. But otherwise, vibe-coding is fun.
|
| This game is made specifically for me and how I like to play, and
| I'm glad others enjoyed it!
| jedberg wrote:
| > Clicking on the ghost enables the ghost piece. I personally
| hate ghost pieces, and I always disable them, so because it's
| my game, I have it off by default.
|
| I love this. You made a game for you, if others like it, great!
|
| > Enter does HOLD
|
| When I got to my first hold I had to go back to the Home Screen
| to see this, because I'd forgotten. And clicking "hold" with
| the mouse didn't do anything. Maybe have a list of the keys on
| the side? Or under where it says "hold"?
|
| > If you get a "Tetris" (four line clear at once) a secret gift
| button appears, but it's just a link to my book, because
| everything I do is soulless cash grab.
|
| I might actually get the book! Looking at the sample it looks
| fun. Could be a card game too.
|
| > This game is made specifically for me and how I like to play,
| and I'm glad others enjoyed it!
|
| I did! It's great for people with kids, because you can just
| stop in the middle.
| jchw wrote:
| Multi bag is probably over-complicating things. You can take a
| note from TGM and just keep a running window of the last n
| pieces and reroll m times until you get one that wasn't in the
| window or run out of tries. I think n is usually 4 and m is
| usually 6. This works great, is easy to implement and doesn't
| feel too predictable (i.e. like single bag does.) Also you can
| preload the window with two S's and two Z's to lower the odds
| of getting those first, since that's annoying :)
| reconnecting wrote:
| Sounds like you want to invent MS Excel.
| admtal wrote:
| Good idea, this game def needs a =VLOOKUP
| layer8 wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "lazy", because all the manual dragging is
| actually quite tedious work. ;)
| osm3000 wrote:
| Gosh this awesome! Thank you! That put a huge smile on my face
| maplant wrote:
| If you happen to find the opposite of this fun, check out Tetris
| the Grand Master 4 which just released on Steam.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| I thought the opposite would be
| https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html
| maplant wrote:
| Apparently this tetris clone has a relatively unforgiving
| piece generator, so I'd say the opposite would something on
| the other end of the speed spectrum
| __s wrote:
| UNDO doesn't clear HOLD
| tiberius_p wrote:
| I still suck at this game, even with all the help.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| This is really cool! My kids like watching me play Tetris, but
| they don't like playing themselves because of the speed of the
| game, even when it first starts.
| lastcoyotes wrote:
| Why does the yellow button link to an amazon listing?
| admtal wrote:
| It's for the authors book, it's a cheeky calling card
| onehair wrote:
| The Joy of Ctrl-U view source and actually finding the SOURCE
| available to read directly in the browser!
| kristopolous wrote:
| I wanted to drag them after they're dropped. That'd be great: "no
| you're going over there."
| carlsverre wrote:
| I think this is the first time I really enjoyed playing tetris.
| Terrific idea!
| cshimmin wrote:
| There's a board-game version of Tetris that I've been playing
| with my toddler, and is pretty much the same low-stress approach.
| It's also multiplayer (the next piece everyone must use is
| decided by drawing cards from a deck). The only shortcoming is
| that you can't do the maneuver where you slide a piece sideways
| just as it hits the bottom to slot it into place under another
| piece. Highly recommend!
| freedomben wrote:
| Really neat! Would love an "auto clear" setting though. Is it
| open source? This seems like a fun project to hack on
| admtal wrote:
| I'll Prob open it up this weekend
| RRRA wrote:
| Needs to be able to rotate in place or certain moves usually
| possible are now unattainable, but great otherwise
| enahs-sf wrote:
| i had some interesting thoughts while playing about how this
| aligns with the work of startups.
|
| Even with the constraints of time and gravity removed and with
| undo, it's still quite easy to make choices that keep the
| structure up but leave gaps which are hard to fill in. These end
| up leading to cruft that's hard to get rid of.
|
| With some degree of ability to look ahead, it's hard to break
| away from the human psychology of aligning the structure to your
| expectations for a certain piece, that may or may not be coming
| in the near future. somewhat analogous to building for an
| audience that may not be there or may never come.
|
| Despite having all advantages, it's still quite possible to paint
| yourself into a corner and fail.
|
| One can learn a lot from this game if they take the time to
| observe it.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| In firefox on desktop I just get a black screen?
| simonmysun wrote:
| I send it to my wife and she couldn't move the pieces because the
| page preview exits when she swipes. There are several tricks to
| disable this default behavior and it would be nice to add them
| admtal wrote:
| How do I lock the preview window?
| experimentctrlz wrote:
| This is super fun and relaxing. Maybe this is me being
| _supremely_ lazy in Lazy Tetris, but I wish there was a way to
| fully clear the whole thing to reset the game without refreshing
| the page. That would let me play this endlessly.
|
| Thanks for making and sharing!
| crvdgc wrote:
| Keep stacking until you "lose", then the stage is set up again.
| EdA1 wrote:
| I had fun with this! Nice job :)
| malkia wrote:
| This is not easy as it sounds!!!
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(page generated 2025-05-27 23:00 UTC)