Tetris — Play Free Online

This Tetris page runs a browser remake laid out like a small handheld console, with a grid screen in the middle and round coloured buttons below it. Its code is the react-tetris project, which a developer known as chvin released as open source on GitHub; the build still links back to that repository. Under the console styling it is the familiar falling-block puzzle: steer the pieces, fill rows, and keep the stack from reaching the top.

The playfield and the seven pieces

The well is ten cells wide and twenty rows tall. Pieces come from the standard set of seven shapes, named after the letters they resemble: I, L, J, Z, S, O and T. A small window beside the well shows which one arrives next, so you always know one piece ahead. A row that is filled from wall to wall disappears and everything above it drops down. When new pieces can no longer enter at the top, the round ends.

Keyboard controls

• Left and right arrows: slide the falling piece sideways.
• Up arrow: rotate it.
• Down arrow: move it down faster.
• Space: drop it straight to the bottom.
• P pauses, S turns the sound on or off, and R restarts.

The same actions are printed on the on-screen buttons, and those buttons react to touch, so the game also works on a phone or tablet by tapping the pad under the screen.

Setting up a round

Before you start, the arrows change the starting conditions instead of moving a piece. Left and right choose a starting speed from 1 to 6. Up and down set the start line value from 0 to 10, which fills the bottom of the well with that many rows of junk blocks. A higher start line leaves less room but gives you rows to clear straight away.

Scoring and speed

Clearing lines one at a time is worth the least. The build pays 100 points for a single line, 300 for two at once, 700 for three and 1500 for four, so stacking for a four-line clear with the long I piece pays far more than taking singles. Every 20 lines cleared raises the speed by one step, up to the top speed of 6. The panel on the right shows your points, the best score (Max), the number of lines cleared (Cleans), the current level and the next piece. Scores are capped at 999999.

Tips

• Keep one column open along a wall and save it for an I piece to collect the 1500-point clears.
• Use Space only once the piece is lined up; a hard drop cannot be taken back.
• If you want a longer warm-up, start at speed 1 with the start line at 0.

The game writes its state to your browser storage, including the board, the current score, the best score and your chosen settings, so reopening the page on the same device brings back where you were.