I have created and am maintaining 3 separate versions of the same Tetris game. They are as follows:
Original C version with Raylib library
https://chastitywhiterose.itch.io/chaste-tris
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1986120/Chaste_Tris/
Lua version with Love2d framework
https://chastitywhiterose.itch.io/lua-tetris
PICO-8
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=51685
https://chastitywhiterose.itch.io/pico-8-chaste-tris
pico_chastetris_html/index.html
The difference between the 3 versions is that they are for different people with different preferences and technological needs. The C version focuses on speed of code and adding extra graphics and music to make it an enjoyable experience. The Lua Love2D version is designed to be simple and quick to boot up and play on any platform that Love2D supports, which are many. The PICO-8 version was made to be able to be played on the web on nearly any device imaginable, including touch screens. These 3 clones of the same game make my game stand out among other Tetris games. Sure there are plenty of others but they are usually done as a small project and then abandoned by the creator and don’t have the features that make Tetris enjoyable, such as the confusing controls and/or the ability to only rotate in one direction.
The official Tetris games published by major game companies are no doubt better than mine, but they have multiple programmers, artists, musicians, and often disappear from the market without warning. I have bought all the modern Tetris games available on Steam including Tetris Effect, and Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 and 2. I love them a lot but that doesn’t mean I trust the Tetris company when it comes to business practices, especially considering the complicated history of Tetris. I like my game because I can improve it as needed and for the first time in my life, I am actually a game programmer.
I want to explain what led to the concept for the first game and also why I made other versions, what the differences are, and why my game is unique among Tetris clones. Being a fan of Tetris for almost my entire life, I became very sad when certain Tetris games previously available became unavailable either due to lawsuits and/or license changes.
The first delisting of Gameboy Tetris from the 3DS eshop a year before a friend bought me a 3DS.
Second was the delisting of Tetris Ultimate, which was available on 3DS,Switch,Steam, and other platforms before it was also delisted. I have heard it wasn’t a very good Tetris game but I don’t like to see games disappear. Video game censorship is similar to book banning in my opinion with a few powerful elites deciding not only what information we access but even what recreational activities we are allowed.
A third delisting was Tetris Friends which disappeared due to the fact that Adobe Flash was removed from everyone’s web browser which also made all other flash games including Robot Unicorn Attack(that is a post for another day) impossible to play without people finding ways to keep alive old flash software and emulators to play their favorite flash games. It can be done but only for the people tech savvy enough to do figure it out had access to games that used to be available for everyone.
Because of these events and my love for Tetris above ALL other video games, I had the idea of creating my own. I knew I was not the first person to make a Tetris game but I wanted one that I could guarantee that I could keep forever because it would be me in control as the single programmer.
But at the time I knew so little about making games and I had never succeeded at making ANY video games. But what happened in 2021 changed my life forever. You see I had a roommate at the time who was also a lover of Tetris and still had a Game Boy. We laughed as we played Tetris on the gameboy and yet I noticed that River, my roomate’s transgender chosen name, could not play at higher speeds like I could and I thought about making a Tetris game that did not pressure people to make moves in a hurry.
But since I was not confident in my ability to make games, I decided to try first making a small version of Tetris that only included the I blocks which River called the “Long Boi”. By focusing on that one block and creating the right arrays in C I found that it was not hard to represent the blocks or the grid. I chose Raylib as the library for graphics and input because it is the easiest to use for game programming that I have found. All the hard work was writing my own functions to move, rotate, and check the collisions of the blocks. This took at least 6 months before I got it down just right and I had to fix a lot of bugs as my code grew bigger. But after I got it working, I decided to also add the other Tetris blocks because my movement and rotation code would work just as well for them. Everything worked so well that I even published the game on Steam to bring it to a wider audience.
I am very happy with the work I have done and I find myself often playing my own game more than official Tetris games because it is relaxing and yet allows me to challenge myself to improve at Tetris as a whole.
And finally, I would like to say that the reason Tetris means to much to me is because it lets me forget my personal struggles and for a moment all the problems I have had disappear and I feel good about myself because I am a person with a mind who is capable of solving at least one problem: The problem of where to fit that next block!