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Show HN: Lazy Tetris (lazytetris.com)

438 points by admtal ↗ HN
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

156 comments

[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] thread
sherdil2022
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
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

wyclif
What key serves as "clear" in this game?
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vunderba
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
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
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
Somehow this is an apt metaphor for life.
ggoo
I would recommend renaming this project to not include the t word.
wvbdmp
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
Does the two finger tap work?
sali0
I love this, spent more time on it than i thought i would. You should make this into a native mobile game.
cube00
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
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
Monetisation.
johnisgood
With screen blocking ads popping up every 5 seconds? :D
Ylpertnodi
With 'several' X's on the ads....to make closing them a 'game'.
hansmayer
Awesome stuff, but have you considered adding an MCP interface so that an AI can play it instead of us :) :)
falcor84
I know you're being facetious, but you can use the Puppeteer/Playwright MCP.
hansmayer
I wasn't actually aware there as Playwright MCP. Well then, maybe we should have a go at it :)
metayrnc
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
Seems to be down currently.
admtal
Hoping the Netlify free tier holds up, wasn't expecting front page
bemmu
This is like Tetris with creative mode.
alana314
Fun! Can we get a keyboard shortcut for clear?
admtal
That is such a good idea, I’ll prob add tomorrow
Obscurity4340
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
Cool.

The drag gesture is slightly broken though. If the piece collides with the wall, it sticks instead of sliding.

hnlmorg
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
Fantastic idea, thank you for sharing, will add multi bag
yreg
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
That's how you get the "tetris" score - by completing 4 row at once.
yreg
And by eye piece I of course mean an I piece.
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keepamovin
Your stuff is very fun. Look at this, this crazy little thing (by same person): https://passwordbasket.com :)
izietto
I laughed so hard I'm worried I bothered my neighbours!!! This is terrific!!!
admtal
Thank you so much, that is all I want to hear in the world
hoosieree
I never before considered that a password generator could be fun. My mind has been changed. Now I believe they should be fun.
raydev
I was shocked by how hard I laughed when I "generated" the password. Great work.
furyofantares
That's excellent. I'm enjoying trying to generate the password "passwordpassword". (To be clear, the best I've gotten on default settings is Pa.s and then gobbledgook rage-restart.)
darkwater
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
On desktop you can click and drag
lynx97
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
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
>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.

lynx97
Pressing 'p' to pause the game basically gives me the same cheatcode :-)
Kaibeezy
Thx for the instant Radiohead earworm :)
bramvanleur
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"_

PetitPrince
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".
aronhegedus
I randomly got 4 line pieces at the start, thought this was going to be a line piece only Tetris variant :D
lorikmor
I played it and thought it was dumb initially but then I loved the way it was not stressing me. Interesting concept
filt
Nice! But a ghost piece would be helpful!
francislavoie
There is one, there's a toggle for it on the right
xnickb
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.