Game Design Of Tetris.

Game Design Of Tetris.

I want to talk about Tetris as it has a very interesting concept of a game. Although it is not the first "beat your high score" game it still does bring in some very important aspects into the history of gaming. Some people even consider Tetris to be the most balanced game to be ever created, because of the way that the score multipliers, different shapes and increasing speed works. I fully agree with this opinion and will fully explain why later on in this post. Tetris has no proper ending however some people claim that they have completed it by achieving the maximum achievable score of 999999 Points. This forced the best Tetris players to come up with new ways to compare their skill as the point comparison was pretty much impossible with many of the players achieving 999999 points.

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unjyveiz09M

So the main questions are... How, do professional Tetris players compare their skill and/or claim to be the best? And, Why, do some people claim that Tetris is the most balanced game ever?

The best Tetris players compare their score based on the amount of lines they have completed. However this comparison can be split into sub-categories. The comparison of the most lines achieved, allowing to see how many lines players can achieve before loosing, and the least amount of lines used to achieve the highest possible score of 999999. Total lines is not as popular and is rarely used by players. There is no proper reason for this apart from the fact that the second method which is to achieve the highest possible score using the least amount of lines is simply more fun and challenging for the players.

Image source: http://img1.game-oldies.com/sites/default/files/snaps/nintendo-nes/tetris-usa.png

So now that i have sorted out the skill comparison i can fully explain why many people (including myself) consider Tetris to be the most balanced game ever. The game is fairly simple however, that is not what makes it balanced. It is the adaptation to players skill. The longer the player plays, the faster the pieces get. The more lines the player completes at once the higher point multiplayer is applied. The more lines are completed the higher level is achieved. All player action slowly increases the difficulty. The only thing that limits the player, is his own skill. The more the player practices the better he becomes at the game and the decision making involved within the game, a simple mistake such as placing a piece wrong way round, that may cause a new player to restart will most have no impact on more advanced players.

But hold on a second, if you think about it... isn't that the case for every game? The more you practice the better you get. so why does it specifically apply to Tetris. Well... it is because of it's simplicity. There is no items, characters, mechanics or game features countering each other and changing the course of each game. The only element that can not be controlled by the player is the randomness of the next piece that is going to drop. It may not make a lot of sense at first but if you play Tetris yourself the point of view that you have changes a little. This explanation may not have been the best and i am sure that you can find more entries and videos on Tetris that explain what i talked about better.