Neon Tetris

Modern-rules block stacking with hold, a ghost piece and a five-piece preview. Clear lines as the speed keeps rising.

Neon Tetris

This is the Tetris you know, seven kinds of pieces on a board ten cells wide, but built on the modern guideline rules, so it feels a little different from the old handheld versions.

You see the next five pieces, and pieces arrive in shuffled sets of seven, so you never sit through twenty pieces without an I. Wall kicks let you rotate against a wall, a faint ghost shows where the piece will land, and hold lets you set one piece aside. You can hold only once until the current piece lands.

How points add up

A single pays 100, a double 300, a triple 500, and a Tetris, four rows at once, 800, all multiplied by your current level. Four singles make 400 while one Tetris makes 800, so if you want points, Tetrises are the baseline.

A T-Spin, rotating the T piece into a tight gap to clear rows, pays 800 for one row, the same as a Tetris, and 1,200 for two. Chain Tetrises or T-Spins with no ordinary clear in between and each gets a back-to-back bonus of 1.5 times. Clearing rows with consecutive pieces adds a combo bonus. Soft drop gives 1 point per cell, hard drop 2.

Levels with no ceiling

The level rises every 10 lines, with no maximum. Around levels 13 to 15 pieces reach the floor almost instantly, and from then on your time to move a landed piece shrinks. It starts at half a second and drops a little each level until it hits 0.05 seconds, so late in a run you need to know where a piece goes before it touches down.

Blocks reaching the top end the run. Reaching 9,999,999 points counts as a clear, but really the contest is how high a level you can survive.

Lasting longer

A flat stack lasts far longer than chasing T-Spins from the start. The dependable plan is to keep one edge column open, build the rest evenly, and drop an I in for a Tetris. If the next I looks far off, keep one in hold.

Deciding two or three moves ahead from the preview keeps you steady as speed climbs. Past level 10, hard drop as your default is actually safer than soft drop. Check the ghost and drop at once; that habit pays off when lock delay gets short.

Controls

←/→ move, ↓ soft drop, ↑ or X rotate clockwise, Z rotate counterclockwise, Space hard drop, C or Shift hold. Mouse and touch players get on-screen buttons and swipes. Esc pauses, M toggles sound, E toggles screen effects.

The leaderboard ranks higher scores first, and your best on this device appears on the start screen.