Due to
Soviet political structure at the time, the
inventor,
Alexey Pajitnov, was not able to patent his game. This gave rise to many sundry Tetris
clones for all manner of machines.
Among my favourites are
Hextris for
X and the much-maligned
Microsoft version for
Windows.
A good
strategy, at least in the latter, is to try and rid yourself of several rows at once. The more rows that are
simultaneously disposed of, the more points you get. As a
level 1 example, removing 1 row will only net 121
points, while removing 4 rows at once will garner a score of 821 (or 205.25 points per row). As levels get higher (and the blocks drop faster) the score per row increases, as does the "bonus" for removing more than one row at a time. A useful course of action,. therefore, is to leave one
column free, on either side of the pit, just building up the rest. Then any
red bricks (4x1) can be dropped in to give large boosts in score.
Other good strategies include making sure that you always have at least two
contiguous columns that are the same height (ie: the surface is unbroken). This way, if one of the annoying light blue (2x2) square pieces appears, it is easy to place without enclosing a "
hole" (which can be difficult to remove later).
In that spirit, try to distribute blocks
evenly across the width of the pit. Towers create several problems. 1) they have a tendency to be bult up and reach the top of the pit (
game over). 2) If a brick is on one side and needed on the other, you can't move it across. 3) The canyons between the towers can be hard to fill. Also, keeping an even
distribution makes it more likely that the surface will be flat (see earlier paragraph). Keep in mind that some small variation is good, so as to accomodate S-shaped blocks (green and dark blue).
Following these strategies should result in good tetris scores.