Arcade

ASCII Tetris

Rotate and stack the seven falling tetrominoes to complete solid rows, which then clear.

Loading Tetris...

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Controls

Left and Right arrowsMove the falling piece sideways.
Up arrow or XRotate the piece clockwise.
ZRotate the piece anticlockwise.
Down arrowSoft drop - lower the piece one row.
SpaceHard drop - send the piece straight down and lock it.
PPause and resume.
R or EnterStart a new game.

How to play

  1. Press R or Enter to start. Pieces fall from the top one at a time.
  2. Move the piece with the left and right arrows, and rotate it with the up arrow, X or Z.
  3. Use soft drop (down arrow) to place a piece carefully, or hard drop (space) to lock it instantly.
  4. Fill a whole row to clear it. Clearing several rows at once scores far more than clearing them one at a time.

About Tetris

Tetris asks you to do two things that pull against each other: place each piece well right now, and keep the stack low enough that you still have room when a piece you cannot use arrives. Clearing a single line is easy; the scoring rewards clearing several at once, so the game is really about building a flat surface and holding your nerve for the long bar that clears four rows together.

The seven tetrominoes and their rotations here follow the usual rules, the pieces fall faster at each new level, and a full row vanishes and pulls everything above it down. Soft drop nudges the piece down one row; hard drop sends it straight to the bottom and locks it. Your best score is kept on this device so each game has a target.

Frequently asked questions

You score for every piece you drop and, far more, for every line you clear. Clearing one line at a time is worth the least per line; clearing two, three or four rows with a single piece is worth progressively more, so a four-row clear is the most valuable move in the game.

Soft drop (the down arrow) lowers the piece one row at a time while you still steer it, which is useful for placing it precisely. Hard drop (space) sends the piece straight to the bottom and locks it immediately, which is faster once you know where it should go.

Yes. Every ten lines you clear raises the level, and each level makes the pieces fall faster. The early levels give you time to think; the later ones are a test of how quickly you can place a piece well.

While you are here

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The same team builds a set of free, privacy-first data and developer utilities - formatters, converters, validators and calculators - that run in your browser the same way these games do.

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