Show HN: Tetris, but silly

[Unit520]

Hello HN!

You can read this [1] blog post if you want to know more about some ideas that I have for this thing. This is just an experiment right now, there isn't any real game (yet). Any feedback would be appreciated, do you think this could become something that would be fun to play?

[1] https://unit520.net/posts/dead-trees-an-absurdist-block-layi...

[dwringer]

I think this is great and a lot of fun. The only improvement I could suggest is that it only seems to clear the bottom line. If I have an incomplete bottom line, but the row above it settles and fills up, it never clears and the rows just keep stacking higher.

[gus_massa]

I agree. It's a fun game. My case with a second complete row https://imgur.com/a/sQEQPKM

After a few games, it quite playable [without using the mouse, that I classify as cheating]. I cleared like 10 or 15 rows and then bad luck stuck :( .

[spoiler alert] The trick is to try to almost complete the first row. And then aim the new pieces toward the bigger holes in the first row, and toward the inclined blocks in the second row so they open the hole. It's like using the new blocks as hammers. But after a while, if you are unlucky the second row is too even and has no inclined blocks and it's too difficult. Once the 2nd and 3rd row are complete, you are doomed.

A row counter and detecting other complete rows would add a lot playability. [Fun game anyway, I'm going to play a few more games now.]

[anyfoo]

Oh, so that's what it was.

My bottom row was a lost cause, but when I managed to fill up some other rows, they didn't clear, and I thought clearing is not implemented at all and stopped playing...

[graderjs]

My strategy was just keep cramming more blocks in and wait. Eventually the pressure at the top forces the bottom line to rearrange and clear.

But I do think the threshold of complete line for the clearing of the bottom should be slightly lower to allow more frequent clearing. I think that would be an improvement that would also increase the playable fun duration.

PS I love this game I think it's very fun and maybe the tongue-in-cheek bylines should be "physically realistic Tetris"

I just noticed, as I think other commenters said, only the bottom line clears. I definitely think it would be an improvement, and I hope you consider, to allow other threshold complete lines to clear as well, as that would also I think increase the playable fun duration of the game.

[hermitcrab]

I had the same issue. Good fun though. I remember playing bouncy Tetris where all the blocks had a jelly like consistency.

[etra0]

I had the same issue, but luckily, with your mouse you can move some of the blocks so you can adjust them to break the first line, and then everything collapses and it's kind of fun to see.

[mrlonglong]

If you hammer away at the boxes such that it fills up the entire screen the weight of all those boxes is enough to crush the ones at the bottom.

Coolness to the max!

[kevincox]

Yeah, holding "Down" was an incredibly effective strategy at 5fps. At least until the tab crashed.

[_benj]

Nice! I tried it the patient way and, with enough luck, lines actually clear when they are completed!

[jffhn]

This is how requirements are integrated into the codebase.

[kazinator]

Reduce friction to minimum first.

[bambax]

This is an amazing idea. So original and yet so simple and "obvious" in a way... Excellent execution, too. Bravo.

(I didn't understand one could interact with the fallen pieces until I read the comments here. Maybe some hint somewhere would help...?)

(Also, parameters on the left are distracting; better have good defaults and let the user play. Being able to move the pieces with the gyro when on mobile (as suggested in another comment) would be great.)

[Kiro]

I love it but I don't know how original it is. Tetris with physics like this is very common to implement as a project when learning Box2D.

[code_runner]

I think goofing around the discovering stuff adds to the fun!

[DrPhish]

Love it. Tetris is such a well worn cultural institution that its ripe for parody.

Reminded me of this Japanese comedy routine involving Tetris[0]

Totally doesn't need any Japanese language skills to enjoy

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpi3JbQiWU

[gotaquestion]

I turned on CC hoping for translation, and it was captioning in Japanese. Lol.

[Unit520]

Thank you all for your nice comments and suggestions, be assured that I read every comment even if I didn't reply to you personally!

I'm glad you liked it and will continue to work on it some more, you had some great suggestions that I certainly want to try out.

[dotdi]

A funny thing happens if you just press the down arrow and keep it pressed. The game area quickly fills up with squares, and then it just continues to add more shapes until, after a minute or so, the whole page turns black.

[drdec]

Aborted(Assertion failed: draw_list->_VtxCurrentIdx < (1 << 16) && "Too many vertices in ImDrawList using 16-bit indices. Read comment above", at: ../extern/include/imgui/imgui.cpp,4269,AddDrawListToDrawData)

[abathur]

I also used this to brute-force completion of lower levels :)

[colechristensen]

I likewise broke it, bravo!

[hubblesticks]

Love this! I tried this on my phone and instinctively tried to turn my phone to make the pieces slide around (after seeing the falling/sliding physics), expecting them to react to the gyro in the phone. Then realized, right, this is a web app!

Great work, fun!

[Unit520]

Thanks for the feedback, using the phone's accelerometer is actually a great idea! As others mentioned, there are web APIs for that these days, I'll try to include something like that in the next version.

[stavros]

I'm confused by your comment, web apps can access the accelerometer fine.

[dragontamer]

Thoughts:

1. Tetris -- Obviously different than Tetris

2. Not Tetris -- https://stabyourself.net/nottetris2/ Similar, but less destructive. Not-Tetris is closer to the original Tetris.

3. Tricky Towers -- https://www.trickytowers.com/ . More similar to this game than Tetris. Tricky Towers blocks aren't destructable, but the physics and very "limited" platform space makes a real game. Special powers (ex: vines) to "solidify" some blocks together really make building higher-and-higher better. The "puzzle" mode of trying to get the most number of blocks with the least height is also very fun.

4. This game -- This is a sandbox for now, the unique part is "impact physics" which can break apart blocks if enough weight / damage were dealt to them. Not a real game yet, but clearly on the path to something fun here. Not sure what the gameplay loop should be, but Tricky Towers is the closest game to maybe draw inspiration from?

[_Microft]

I like it!

For other players: you can pull and push pieces around if they do not align into proper lines by themselves. Clearing lines works!

[hermitcrab]

Moving blocks with the mouse feels a bit of a cheat!

[shaunxcode]

nice. I figured out just holding down space eventually starts clearing a lot of lines until it crashes.

[ninju]

Yeah...not clear in the instructions or the UI

You can click and drag the fallen parts to complete a row

Cool!!!

[thematrixturtle]

Is there a way to play this on mobile? Tapping makes the pieces drop, but I can't work out a way to control the pieces.

[jader201]

Came here to ask this. Not sure why this isn’t mentioned more — or is it and I’m just overlooking it?

Right now the only controls I can figure out on mobile is touch = drop. No way to move anything that I can tell.

[aasasd]

My favorite variation on ‘silly Tetris’ is Triptych: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0

Quite similar to the OP actually in terms of physics, but with three-in-a-row as the game mechanic.

The game can be found on Internet Archive, as usual with old-ass games: https://archive.org/details/trpsetup

BTW, the left panel in ‘Dead Trees’ seems to have some problem with Retina screens: I can barely discern anything on it. Perhaps the author would want to apply some kind of zoom to compensate.

[plank]

Funny, did not understand how up play on iPad (clicking only let the blocks go down). I think there are some small bugs in the code, see image (several rows full but not clearing, and there is a block on row 4+5 that overlaps with the full(!) row 4 and the (non-full) row 5. Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm1qbow9h7fvsmw/20220507_093125.jp...

[bee_rider]

I enjoyed it.

It seems like only full rows in the bottom are counted or something? Or maybe I had a subtle alignment issue. But eventually I got a small gap at the bottom. I ended up with a bunch of full rows, all the way up. Eventually the blocks got over my "dropping point." So, I created a bunch of blocks all at once near the top, compressing all rows below. This caused something to squish into the bottom row, freeing up a little space. 10/10, best compressive tetris mechanism ever.

A shake button would be nice.

[bee_rider]

If anyone gets in a jammed up position, try putting friction very low, and release velocity to -15, to slam some pieces into the stack and jumble them a bit (so they can relax into a full column).

At first I thought only having the bottom row delete when filled was pretty annoying, but actually it might make the game, it really plays up the difference from normal Tetris.

Some variance in the block weight might be nice (2x2 should obviously be heaviest, or you could make the individual... blockletts have different density. Maybe represented by their alpha or brightness or something?)

I'd like the ability to launch a 2x2 block at a 45 degree angle.

[lucb1e]

This is fun! Creative idea and nicely made.

https://dro.pm/k.png -- Is this a bug, or are you basically game over once you have a gap in your bottom row and the rest will never line up perfectly enough to disappear?

Edit: resolved it by layering a third full row, then smashing it by luck in the right way to make something drop down to the bottom one. So yes, bottom row always just needs to be filled.

Edit2: Some tricks

- drag a block

- hold down the arrow down button (until the page goes completely blank and you get Aborted(Assertion failed: draw_list->_VtxCurrentIdx < (1 << 16) && "Too many vertices in ImDrawList using 16-bit indices. Read comment above", at: ../extern/include/imgui/imgui.cpp,4269,AddDrawListToDrawData))

- play with the controls on the left of course :)

Also loving that there is no loss condition. The game doesn't tell you when you've lost, you can decide that for yourself!

[xigency]

This is really cool but I have some feedback: being able to drag the pieces removed all of the challenge, so it wasn’t really fun; only the bottom row will clear - this kind of breaks the game when not “cheating” with manually dragging pieces.

Overall, I think if you fixed those two points this would be a great and challenging game.

[utbabya]

Feels like a real game to me, I spent good 15 minutes trying to clear the remaining 2 blocks, which is supposedly an impossible state. Turns out when you hold space you randomly lose blocks to the void so you can shift it back to multiplies of 12s by reoding it, meta! I did get the satisfaction of winning the level i created myself by cleaning up the mess back to blank state manually.

[ineedasername]

Pointless & frivolous. I love it.

There used to be some plugin where you could click a button & be shown a random site that someone had tagged as being interesting for some reason. It was a great way to find all sorts of stuff off the the beaten path like this, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called to see if it still exists.

Does anyone remember it, or whether or not something similar exists today? I used it around the time Web 2.0 was just coalescing into a major thing.

EDIT: StumbleUpon! Unfortunately it seems a bit closed off, gated by a login & invite code. And the items on the public site look like they're just photos...

[Hodglim]

You might be thinking of StumbleUpon? (https://www.stumbleupon.com) I used to spend hours on that site!

[travisdock]

Stumbleupon?

[nyanpasu64]

I didn't know how to trigger https://unit520.net/deadtrees/ at first (focus the page then use arrow keys). Oddly the first page load hung at a static canvas that stretched as I resized the window, while reloading worked. F12 showed a (false positive) warning:

> wasm streaming compile failed: TypeError: WebAssembly: Response has unsupported MIME type 'application/octet-stream' expected 'application/wasm'

Is this something you want to fix?

[Unit520]

Thanks for reporting!

Yeah, I'm aware of this error, it seems to be related to the shared hosting I'm using, I can't replicate it when serving locally. But as long as it is "falling back to ArrayBuffer instantiation" all is good, and I didn't investigate further because this fallback mechanism actually loads the WASM module faster than the "streaming compile" method (these things are provided by Emscripten).

I have no idea why it didn't load on the first try for you though.

[swah]

I always loved this kind of game and playing with the libraries demos (IIRC box2d) back in the day.

Is this using a port of that? I wish there were more not gaming uses for these kinds of interfaces.

[unnouinceput]

Thank you for this, bookmarked this one. Going to be an awesome resource for slapping in the face to all those evangelists that chant "browser games are the future" because once you keep pressing down arrow and the screen is filled with rectangles it crawls to a stop at several thousand of them, while a similar implementation in native C++ using Unreal Engine 5 will not break a sweat even at dozens of millions on screen.

[Unit520]

This is actually written in C++ and I compile it to a native executable during development, and yet it crawls to a stop exactly the same, so I'm afraid that that one's on me. :D (It's an inefficiency related to the breakage particles and waits patiently on a big pile of other code TODOs at the moment.)

Nevertheless, I don't disagree with you on your general sentiment towards browser games, I like fast native executables as well.