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July 17, 2011 7:04 AM   Subscribe

Untris... not heaven or hell, but a strange parallel universe... beyond the reaches of time...
posted by lemuring (25 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great idea, but it's really buggy.
posted by empath at 7:15 AM on July 17, 2011


Unfortunate kerning aside, that's actually pretty neat. Arise, Sir Tet.

It took me a while to work out that you can click outside of the grid to un-clear rows, and that the place you choose has to have a solid block underneath for the piece to have landed on.

I'm still not sure I entirely like the algorithm — it doesn't seem to allow for T-Spins — but I think I'm starting to get the hang of how to think about it.
posted by lucidium at 7:18 AM on July 17, 2011


...the place you choose has to have a solid block underneath for the piece to have landed on.

To add, you can't remove anything that you couldn't put back in by the Game Boy variant of the rules. So no removing Z or S pieces out of two solid rows and so on.
posted by griphus at 7:25 AM on July 17, 2011


I can't even tell if it was working for me or not. There were no pieces falling, there was no keyboard command which allowed for rotating or whatever. All I could do was add a full row of blocks to the grid or undo those rows or reset the board. If there's a game contained in there, it's too opaque for my tiny bear brain to figure out or else it doesn't run on my computer.
posted by hippybear at 7:27 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


You're playing tetris backwards. Now that you explained you need to have a piece below, I think it's not buggy, just needs better documentation
posted by empath at 7:57 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]


Hippybear, q/w rotate the pieces, z adds a line, r resets the puzzle and Left-click to match (i.e. remove) a shape when the "ghosted area" turns blue.
posted by oddman at 8:00 AM on July 17, 2011


I don't really understand adding rows at all.
posted by muddgirl at 8:00 AM on July 17, 2011


I don't really understand adding rows at all.

In real Tetris, a full row only exists briefly at the end of the turn it was created in. Conversely, in Untris, you can only add a row at the beginning of your move if your current move will remove it.

(Also, the "heaven" link is hosted on a content aggregator. Credit is due to XKCD #888)
posted by rh at 9:12 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


My best score so far is 420. I've figured out not to leave any empty rows, but beyond that I haven't worked out much of a strategy. Anyone have any tips?
posted by lucidium at 9:13 AM on July 17, 2011


Fancy, but ow my brain.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:19 AM on July 17, 2011


Aw, that's kind of an anti climax. When you get to 0, it just keeps going into a negative score, so my "best" is now -60.

I really want to believe that something happens if you manage to hit 0 and then empty the grid, but I've already spent way too long playing this game.
posted by lucidium at 9:36 AM on July 17, 2011


This pleases me, though I don't have much patience for it. Also the music is "A-Type" played in reverse.
posted by silby at 10:05 AM on July 17, 2011


I can't understand why it allows a block to turn blue and looks like I can place it (there's still at least one block below it), but don't let me actually place it. Very frustrating and I really don't like the backwards theme.
posted by maryr at 12:22 PM on July 17, 2011


oddman: yes, I saw those instructions on the screen. None of them worked for me. There was nothing happening at all aside from annoying music and the ability to add a row and delete it. Were pieces supposed to be falling or appearing? I saw the "next piece" indicator to the right, but there was no piece that ever appeared. I could add rows anywhere on the screen I wished, and fill up the screen to the top, but the game never did anything or went anywhere or ended.
posted by hippybear at 1:48 PM on July 17, 2011


hippybear - it's reverse tetris. Pieces don't fall, they're removed.

So if you start with a square, you have to find or construct a square that can be removed according to the rules - it can't be blocked in, it has to be supported, and if you've added rows then the piece has to "complete" all those rows.

If you move your phantom-piece over a successful move, it should turn blue.
posted by muddgirl at 1:53 PM on July 17, 2011


also, the q and w buttons rotate the current piece (which really, in non-reverse tetris, was the last piece) - the current piece is displayed on your mouse cursor.
posted by muddgirl at 1:55 PM on July 17, 2011


There was no current piece displayed in my mouse cursor. It was a red square which remained red no matter where on the screen I put it. I literally spent 20 minutes putting that red square onto every part of the play area, and tried using the rotate keys when it seemed like it should be doing something.

*shrug* It doesn't matter. I'm not a video game player much. I'm guessing it didn't load correctly into my machine or something. If I feel like I care later, I'll give it another try and see if it works differently the next time I load the game.
posted by hippybear at 2:06 PM on July 17, 2011


The red square IS your current piece. When you rotate a square, you get... a square.

It's possible that you have a tetris board which can't legally remove a square. Try resetting a few times until you get a board that works.
posted by muddgirl at 2:08 PM on July 17, 2011


...or rather "works" without adding a line.
posted by muddgirl at 2:09 PM on July 17, 2011


dick to start

UGH, game spoiled
posted by circular at 2:49 PM on July 17, 2011


Right, I got a blue "green light", clicked on the position, and nothing happened.
posted by maryr at 2:50 PM on July 17, 2011


This is a phenomenal game. I think this thread is a good indication of how hard it is to take a widely recognizable pattern and break it.
posted by Plutor at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2011


This is a phenomenal game. I think this thread is a good indication of how hard it is to take a widely recognizable pattern and break it.

Or possibly, how to take a widely used browser and break it.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:41 PM on July 18, 2011


For which browser is this broken? As far as I can tell, every problem people are having with this game is because there are no instructions and it's a challenging brain-shift.
posted by Plutor at 12:51 PM on July 18, 2011


It wasn't working for me in Chrome when I first tried it - maybe the site was getting hammered or something, though, because it works now.

Once working correctly, I found it still mostly frustrating (too hard to get rid of empty lines - even backwards, I can't quite understand how you'd get a block floating in space). At any rate, it's an interesting thought exercise.
posted by maryr at 7:48 AM on July 19, 2011


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