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 and Spins

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!

Many rotations that make use of wall kicks are called spins, also known as twists. The specific definition of a spin varies between games, but in this guide I'll use the term "spin" to describe any successful rotation that meets at least one of the following criteria:

• The rotation moves a piece into an immobile position
  • An immobile position is one where the active piece does not have space to move in any direction
  • This also includes such rotations that are not explicitly recognised as spins by the current game
• The rotation is an in-place rotation of a piece that is already in an immobile position, in a game that explicitly recognises spins for the piece being rotated
  • An in-place rotation is a rotation that does not trigger a wall kick
• The rotation doesn't meet the other two criteria, but is still recognised by the current game as a spin
  • The most well-known example of this is the corner-based spin detection used for the T-piece in guideline Tetris games, as these do not necessarily require the piece to be immobile after kicking

• 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. I would recommend avoiding Fandom except for the extremely rare instances of pages that are not on the other two wikis (and even then, those pages tend to be incredibly "scuffed"). I have done my best to minimise links there, but if you must use it, please ensure you have an ad blocker.

• 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. It's very much a rambling opinion piece, but I'd love to know what other people think about this topic!

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". 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.

I've seen a lot of people look at an announcement for a new Tetris game, or a port of an older game to modern hardware, state that "it's just Tetris", lamenting how the game is supposedly no different from any Tetris games that are already available on the platform no matter how much the game presents its own features that may not be included elsewhere.

Tetris, like many other puzzle franchises, is a series of video games that shows clear evolution between entries while maintaining the core premise of the original. Each entry either builds on or deviates from the last by introducing new modes and gameplay mechanics that give the player different options when playing. Many entries would be better described as "sequels" than "versions", and some Tetris sub-series even feature numbered entries.

New mechanics are often much more than simple quality-of-life improvements. Take lock delay for example - this gives the player a set amount of time to place their piece even after it reaches the floor, even at high gravity. Depending on the game, this can make the game more accessible to new players (like in modern guideline Tetris games), or it can be used to drastically increase the game's maximum gravity and skill cap (like in the Tetris The Grand Master series). In either case, this makes the game play quite differently from a game that locks pieces as soon as gravity takes effect on the floor, like in NES Tetris. It allows different entries to test different skill sets - TGM and NES Tetris are both extremely difficult games, but they have their own distinct communities because they're challenging for vastly different reasons.

Even with the Tetris Guideline unifying certain mechanics in later Tetris games, there is room for these games to be different. Many features of the guideline are optional, evident by their exclusion from certain entries (for example, Tetris Giant does not feature Hold or hard drop). In addition, features not specified in the guideline can be added on top, such as the Zone mechanic in Tetris Effect that drastically affects the core gameplay loop.

My gripes with the perception of Tetris as a single game with many "versions" extend to Tetris-like stackers, often referred to as Tetris games by the community due to them using the term to describe the entire stacker genre. They're typically referred to as "unofficial" or "fan-made" games due to this perception - I don't see the term "Tetris-like" very often even though I think it's a much more fitting term for the tetromino stacker genre, similar to how we have genres like "Roguelike" or "Soulslike" to describe games with similar gameplay loops to the games their genres are named after.

Many Tetris-like stackers deviate from the Tetris series in ways that can be even more distinct than the differences between entries in said series, even if they retain the core gameplay loop and superficial presentation Tetris players are accustomed to. The most interesting example of this, at least to me, is the implementation of various rotation systems, allowing pieces to move on rotation into places that wouldn't be possible in Tetris games. This can make optimal stacking methods quite different between games, and much like in Tetris, being good at any of these games requires significant technical understanding of how their specific rotations actually work.

Even details that seem trivial, such as movement timings, can have a huge effect on how a game is played. Many stackers impose a limit on how quickly you can move pieces, forcing high-level players to prioritise efficient stacking and clearing, while others allow players to remove these limits, allowing them to overcome poor efficiency by playing much faster than what is possible in a limited tuning game. Like with the other distinctions, one preference or style of play is not necessarily better than the other - they just give the player even more options to consider when deciding which game to play and how they play it.

Please consider trying out various stacker games and their different modes to see the full extent of what this genre has to offer!

Anyway, rant aside, I'd like to present how I'm personally using some terms related to stacker games 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 because the community often uses "Tetris" to refer to the entire genre
  • There is a variety of sub-communities for specific stacker games
• 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!