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KitaruTC1 day ago(+1)

Thank you for the feedback! :)

I think you're picking up what I was putting down with the color scheme, just from a more modern frame of reference. Since I my mindset was a "80's puzzle pastiche," I used a Sega-like color scheme: "L" orange, "J" blue, "O" yellow, "T" cyan, "I" red. I agree the "J" color could be made a bit less grey; I initially just chose colors off the default palette of the art program I loaded up.

Makes sense about soft drop. During the jam period, I just implemented a Sega-style 1G soft drop and moved on. I can definitely make some adjustments; a Nintendo-style 1/2G or 1/3G soft drop would make it a bit easier to get the piece close to the ground without forcing it to lock.

Either way, I certainly feel you on the difficulty of executing spins; the reward is so much higher with these piece shapes, but they're tough to hit under gravity lock. I wanted to explore something like Nintendo/Atari style gravity/locking behaviors, but it feels like I'm resisting the "carcinization" of puzzle games; sea creatures want to evolve to become crabs, and classic-style block games want to evolve to have Sega/TGM mechanics like lock delay. :p

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Nilssius1 day ago

Your explanation makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining your thought process! I did briefly look up all the different things you mentioned.

I still prefer the modern Tetris colours, because that's what I'm most familiar with. But even if you tried to follow the modern colour scheme, it would be difficult since it's not the same pieces, and I'm sure not everyone would agree with my reasoning :p

Since you mentioned an alternative timeline, it got me thinking how someone could take the new concept and simulate the evolution through different eras and devices. It would be a lot of work, but a very cool and fun art project.

Although, if it were realistic, it would probably evolve into Tetris pieces because of how balanced they are compared to other variations. They are truly the crabs of the block stacker format.

(\/) (°,,,,°) (\/)

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KitaruTC23 hours ago

We're on the same page, haha. Our discussion of different ways to cut the mechanics also gave me the thought that it'd be amusing to have a "UFO 50" style framing for different game modes. :p

But yeah, it all does rest on the premise that hinged trominoes would somehow have been more practical or natural than conventional tetrominoes. Thought experiments like this just reinforce what we already knew about the functional/mechanical benefit of tetrominoes. Alternative piece sets can be made to work, but will often have some sort of rough edges (e.g., this game's "T"). If it seems to us as a more challenging variant of the genre we're already familiar with, then how plausible is it that this would have been conceived of as the "path of least resistance" for our hypothetical alt-timeline designers?

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