unit520.net
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...
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.]
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...
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.
Coolness to the max!
(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.)
Reminded me of this Japanese comedy routine involving Tetris[0]
Totally doesn't need any Japanese language skills to enjoy
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.
Great work, fun!
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?
For other players: you can pull and push pieces around if they do not align into proper lines by themselves. Clearing lines works!
You can click and drag the fallen parts to complete a row
Cool!!!
Right now the only controls I can figure out on mobile is touch = drop. No way to move anything that I can tell.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Overall, I think if you fixed those two points this would be a great and challenging game.
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...
It used to be my go-to distraction when I had a job where there was literally nothing to do. (I had been hired into a group where the team lead had already automated everything. The one thing we had to do was bounce the servers every Friday & perform nationwide DB replication w/ local sites. The group was preserved because a of a pending transition that would eventually yield more work, but that was > 0.5 years in the future. The team lead was a good mentor though, and the person who taught me strategic laziness & the constant goal to automate yourself out of a job... Under the theory that you'd then find more interesting things to work on instead. But with an EOL'ed system there were no new projects that could be started)
> wasm streaming compile failed: TypeError: WebAssembly: Response has unsupported MIME type 'application/octet-stream' expected 'application/wasm'
Is this something you want to fix?
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.
Is this using a port of that? I wish there were more not gaming uses for these kinds of interfaces.
Nevertheless, I don't disagree with you on your general sentiment towards browser games, I like fast native executables as well.
Combine this with Hatetris, perhaps? Oh, wait, you said "fun"...
The blocks seem to try to clear themselves. :-)