Rules and mechanics

What the game is actually doing under the hood: rotation systems, wall kicks, lock delay, the seven-bag, and precisely how every point is scored.

18 articles

• How the Seven-Bag Randomiser WorksPieces are not drawn at random. Every group of seven contains each shape exactly once, which makes the queue countable.
• The Super Rotation System, ExplainedFour defined states per piece and a table of fallback offsets, which is what lets a piece spin into a gap it should not fit.
• Wall Kicks: Why Your Piece Moved When You Rotated ItA blocked rotation tries a list of nudges before giving up. Knowing that list turns a quirk into a tool.
• Lock Delay: The Half-Second That Saves Your RunA landed piece does not lock immediately, and nudging it restarts the clock, up to a limit.
• The Ghost Piece and Why It Is Not CheatingThe outline showing where a piece will land removes arithmetic, not difficulty.
• How the Hold Slot WorksPark one piece for later, but only once per piece, which is what makes it a decision rather than an undo button.
• Hard Drop and Soft Drop: When to Use WhichOne slams and locks instantly, one accelerates and keeps your options open. They are not interchangeable.
• How Gravity Speeds Up, Level by LevelThe curve is not linear. It is gentle for ten levels, and then it stops being gentle.
• How the Game Knows You Did a T-SpinTwo conditions, checked when the piece locks: the last action was a rotation, and three corners are occupied.
• Perfect Clears: Emptying the Board CompletelyClear every block on the field at once and the bonus dwarfs everything else in the scoring table.
• The Back-to-Back Bonus, and What Counts as DifficultChain four-row clears and T-spins without an ordinary clear between them, and everything is worth half again as much.
• Combos: Clearing With Consecutive PiecesEvery piece in a row that clears something extends the chain, and the bonus grows the longer it runs.
• The Complete Scoring TableEvery value in the game, what multiplies what, and the order the bonuses apply in.
• DAS and ARR: The Timings Behind Holding a DirectionTwo numbers control how a held key moves a piece, and they change how the game feels more than any other setting.
• Exactly How a Run EndsNot when the stack looks full, but when a new piece has nowhere to spawn.
• The Seven Pieces, One by OneWhat each shape is good for, what it ruins, and why S and Z are the ones that end runs.
• Where Pieces Spawn and Why the Buffer ExistsA couple of hidden rows above the visible field give rotations somewhere to go.
• What Counts as a Difficult ClearA precise list, because the back-to-back bonus depends entirely on it.