Book’s Author: Richard Rouse III
Summarized by Samuel Coelho
6. Game Analysis: Tetris
Game developers, the press, and developers alike tend to resent games for its sales, but what is about Tetris that makes the game immune to criticism? It would appear something about the game’s simplicity and clearness of design vision that makes even the most cynical game developer concede the game’s greatness.
Gameplay in Tetris is exceedingly uncomplicated. The game-world is a tall, rectangular, 2D box. Blocks appear at the top of the box. The blocks are made up of four squares arranged in every possible pattern where all squares share at least one side with another square. The blocks then slowly fall to the bottom of the box, and players are able to move these blocks to the ledt and right, or rotate the piece in 90 degrees increments. Once the block hits an obstruction, either the bottom of the box or another piece, the block stops moving. Players lose control of the block, and another piece that players can now control appears at the top of the screen. When the blocks at the bottom of the screen form a horizontal line across the rectangle, that line of squeres disappears, and any squares above that line move down one row. As gameplay progresses, the speed at which these blocks fall from the top of the screen increases, thus increasing the challenge for players and ramping up the difficulty over the course of the game. The player’s game is over once incomplete rows of the blocks fill up the game-world rectangle and subsequent pieces are prevented from entering the play-field.
Everyone who plays Tetris, each time they play it, has a unique experience. Players can always find ways to improve their Tetris playing ability. This is a crucial difference between Tetris and a traditional puzzle. Once players have solved a puzzle, if they remember how they did it the first time, the puzzle will no longer present any challenge to them.
6.1 Puzzle Game or Action Game?
One action game mechanic Tetris uses is the sense of an ever-approaching threat that players have to address in a limited amount of time. Players constantly have to consider where the future blocks will or will not be able to fit. Players may learn to recognize certain pieces of configurations, but every game is sufficiently unique that no players can be completely prepared for the challenges that may face.
6.2 Tetris as a Classic Arcade Game
Despite the fact that Tetris wasn’t originally conceived for gameplay in arcades, there are many traits from arcade games’s design principles in it that let us classify it as an arcade game. These traits are: single screen play, infinite play, scoring/high scores, simple gameplay, and having no story.
There is no exploration component to the game, no way to really surprise players (beyond what piece appears next), so players have all information they need to be successful at the game, and have nothing to blame but themselves for failure.
The achieving of a higher score make players want to play the game again.
Players will need only three buttons in order to play Tetris. Thus, anyone, regardless of how familiar they are with computer games, can walk up to the game and start playing it immediately.
6.3 The Technology
Tetris’s gameplay is so strong that it does not matter how technologically simple its implementation may be, the game is still wildly entertaining.
The implementation of Tetris is so simple that many aspiring game programmers start out by making a Tetris clone.
Tetris knockoffs attempted to make “improvements” on the original, either through fancy effects or special pieces of various sorts. None of these attempts were particularly successful, and players continued to want to return to the original.
Enhanced technology is not necessarily beneficial to a given game, and game designers must be wary when the whizbang engine effects start to get in the way of what makes the game entertaining in the first place.
6.4 Artificial Intelligence
Tetris artificial intelligence randomly picks the blocks which fall into the play-field.
The fact that a random number generator provides all the challenges in Tetris demonstrates an important point. The AI the players face only needs to be as smart as the game mechanics require.
6.5 Escalating Tension
Tetris is very ruthless in the way it escalates tension throughout the game. The game’s tension escalates as a result of the plauyer’s mistakes. The only reprieve players find in Tetris is when they “battle their way back” from a trick situation.
Further escalating the game’s tension in the acceleration of the speed at which the pieces fall over the course of the game. When player’s score increases above certain amounts, the pieces in the course of the game start moving at a faste rate, which makes the game nerve-racking for the players.
Further complicating matters are the bonus points players receive for removing four rows all at once with an “I” piece. With this tactic, the game tempts players into taking potentially game-ending risks.
6.6 Simplicity and Symmetry
All of the pieces in Tetris are composed of four squares, each of which shares at least one side with another square. This gives the game an inherent consistency and balance.
At some point a complexity level begins to stifle the core nature of a game and confuses players instead of challenging them. It would appear Tetris expertly follows the adage that everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler.
Part of what makes Tetris so elegant is the completeness of its pieces. Every possible permutation of four squares with squares sharing sides is used in the game.
When playing, players will find themselves presented with many situations that cry for certain pieces. The natural completeness and symmetry of the pieces available to players in Tetris is a crucial component if its balance.
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