Rotation

When you press a rotation button, your active piece will rotate by 90 degrees in the chosen direction.

Obvious statements aside, there's actually a lot more going on than most people give it credit for.

A piece can be in one of four rotation states. In this guide, I will describe rotation states using "0R2L" rotation notation, in which pieces spawn in state 0, and rotating right (clockwise) changes to R, 2, L, then back to 0. Likewise, rotating left (counter-clockwise) from state 0 will cycle through states L, 2, R, and 0.

State-dependent rotations (i.e. those where the rotation state is relevant) will be written as combinations of the above rotation states, with an arrow to indicate direction. For example:

• A clockwise rotation from 0 to R is 0R>
• A counter-clockwise rotation from 0 to L is <0L
• A clockwise 180-degree rotation from 0 to 2 is 0R2>
• A single button 180-degree rotation from 0 to 2 is <02>

You may be wondering how a 0R2> rotation differs from a <02> rotation. There's actually one game in this guide that implements 180-degree rotations like those featured in the Puyo Puyo series, where you can flip a piece by quickly double-tapping a rotation button in a tight space. Rotations like these technically work differently from 180-degree rotations triggered by a single button press, hence the different notation.

State-agnostic rotations (i.e. those where the rotation state doesn't matter) will be written in one of two ways. The longer notation will be used for rotations on their own, while the shorter notation will be used for sequences.

• Counter-Clockwise - CCW or L
• Clockwise - CW or R
• 180 - 180 or F

In many stackers (especially modern Tetris games), the O-piece can have multiple rotation states even if each one is identical. This means the O-piece is actually rotating internally even if there is no visual feedback for doing so. In the Tetris Worlds implementation of the commonly used Super Rotation System, or SRS for short, the O-piece internally rotates around one of its blocks (the lower-left block in state 0), but an offset is applied to keep it in place when rotated. This may or may not be the case for implementations in other games, though.

• Sources
  • SRS wiki pages: Hard Drop | TetrisWiki
  • Rotation on Puyo Nexus

Wall Kicks

Wall kicks are a feature of many modern rotation systems, allowing pieces to move when rotated if their new position is obstructed by a wall or another piece.

In SRS, four alternative positions are checked if basic rotation fails, and the piece will move to the first one that succeeds. For example, this is how the infamous Fin TSD works in SRS:

Different rotation systems can handle wall kicks by defining a different offset table, or instead try to kick by rotating around an alternate centre. Regardless of implementation, they're super fun to use once you know how they work!

• Sources
  • Lilla Oshisaure - Puyo Puyo Tetris offset chart
    • Includes SRS kicks and PPT-specific pentomino/O-piece kicks
  • bocifer - SRS offset charts
    • Huge inspiration for my own offset charts for other rotation systems!
  • Wall kick overview on FOUR.lol
  • Polymer T-Spins on FOUR.lol

Wiki Links

You may have noticed that I provide two very similar wiki links for many of the sections in this guide. Hard Drop and TetrisWiki are both fantastic community resources for information about Tetris games, but many of the pages have very similar content due to being forked from the now-defunct Tetrisconcept wiki, and editors (including me) adding content to both wikis at the same time.

Which one you pick is really down to personal preference, though if there's something you can't find on one wiki, you will probably be able to find it on the other.

Even though past proposals to merge the wikis have been rejected, the Tetris community generally agrees that both of them are significantly better than the Fandom wiki. Most of what I have seen on there seems to pre-date the wiki split, but there are still some pages on there that have useful information not on the other two wikis. I'd use it for those specific pages, but the others for everything else.

• Resources
  • Hard Drop main page
  • TetrisWiki main page
• Useful Tools
  • Kevin Payravi - Indie Wiki Buddy

"Versions of Tetris"?

So this section is that rant about semantics I mentioned earlier, which you'll hopefully find somewhat educational and/or entertaining. I'd love to know what other people think about this topic!

Also, I hope this rant doesn't come across as too negative or angry. I'm not mad at any of you, I promise.

Am I the only one who is bothered by different Tetris games, and stackers in general, being referred to as "versions of Tetris"? It's a term which perpetuates the myth that the Tetris series is literally just the same game ported to pretty much every device imaginable, and that Tetris-like stackers are just knock-offs of what they perceive to be the "real thing".

Sure, the original Tetris was the first stacker game. It did indeed start the genre of puzzle games which many people in the Tetris community name after it. But to say that they're all just the exact same game is plainly wrong.

This isn't helped at all by the fact that even The Tetris Company, who licenses the Tetris series, refers to their own games as "versions" of the same game instead of what they are: entries in a series.

Don't get me started on the whole "it's just Tetris" thing.

While all (tetromino-based) stacker games may superficially look identical to each other, they all feel very different to play at anything higher than a casual level. This is even true of modern Tetris games which have to adhere to the Tetris Guideline. Some examples of differences which drastically affect gameplay include:

• Game modes
• Rotation systems
• Piece randomisers
• Available drop types (soft, hard, sonic)
• Hold mechanics
• Spin recognition
• Lock delay (or lack of it)
• Timings (e.g. DAS and ARR)

To clear up some terms related to stacker games, this is how I use them in this guide:

• Stacker / Stacker Game
  • A genre of puzzle games in which you place pieces (typically tetrominoes) and clear horizontal lines by completing them
  • Includes the Tetris series and all Tetris-like stackers
  • May use pieces other than tetrominoes or feature non-tetromino modes (outside the scope of this guide)
  • Another name for this genre is "falling block puzzle"
• Tetris Community
  • The general community of people who love stacker games
  • Includes stackers outside of the Tetris series
  • The name is likely because the community often uses "Tetris" to refer to the entire genre
• Tetris Series
  • A series of stacker games licensed by The Tetris Company or its predecessors
• Tetris Game
  • An entry in the Tetris series
  • Does not include games outside of the Tetris series
  • Most are distinct from each other
• Tetris-like Stacker
  • A stacker game whose gameplay is largely based on Tetris, but is not a part of the Tetris series
  • Being a "Tetris game" and being a "Tetris-like stacker" are mutually exclusive
  • Known in the Tetris community as "unofficial games" or "fan games"
  • Again, most are distinct from each other (and also from Tetris)
• Version
  • A game ported to another platform with few or no changes
  • Alternatively, a patched release of a game, indicated by a different version number
  • The PS4 and Switch releases of Tetris Effect are versions of Tetris Effect, but Tetris Effect is not just a version of Tetris
  • 1.3.4 and 2.0.2 are also versions of Tetris Effect, regardless of platform

With that out of the way, let's get to the part where we rotate some O-pieces!