Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games

TGM actually has a pretty interesting 1v1 system. I wish it was more popular.

Most other Tetris games (all that I've played, at least) throw randomized garbage at the opponent. It scales with the number of lines you clear, but it always has a one column gap in a random position, no control over that.

But TGM's garbage is deterministic. Basically, imagine taking the lines you just cleared, but remove the piece that completed them. That missing piece will be the gap. Flip what's left upside down and add it to the bottom of your opponent's stack.

Now you have full control over the position and shape of the garbage you send!

This adds a nice layer of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive since you need to constantly watch your opponent's stack and act accordingly. You want to add garbage where your opponent will struggle to clear it while also being on the lookout for what kind of garbage they'll be sending you and try to play around it.

And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games), as well as just add some exciting or funny turnarounds. There's also a timing element to triggering the items, which adds even more strategy.

https://tetris.wiki/TGM_Versus_Mode_Guide

I absolutely do think TGM versus mode is interesting. I'm not sure how to feel about it, but the lack of random garbage is a very big plus.

> And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games),

This seems to be a tricky thing to balance in competitive games. It's boring if the more skilled player wins every single match even in fairly close matchups, but it's also frustrating if any specific win/loss is dictated specifically by random chance or "unfair" game mechanics. This seems to essentially force game design to go a little off the path and overcomplicate things a little to try to make the game more interesting.

I strongly recommend taking a look at Puyo Puyo (particularly Tsu) if you are a competitive puzzle game enjoyer. It is a seriously good multiplayer puzzle game. Where Tetris is an excellent single player game and a good multiplayer game, Puyo Puyo is an excellent multi player game. You can see the game design issues play out especially over the early iterations of it; they pretty much nail the formula in Tsu, so most of the changes from thereon just kind of add additional complications that can make the game a bit more interesting and add some ways that someone can feasibly win a match against a better opponent.

Among the many puzzle games people play somewhat competitively (Tetris, Panel de Pon, Dr. Mario even,) I think Puyo Puyo is the one that deserves much more attention. Not that I think the game design behind Tetris multiplayer shouldn't be iterated on, but after seeing and studying high level Puyo Puyo play, it just makes it feel like Tetris multiplayer will never be able to have the same amount of depth. Of course, it's still plenty enjoyable, especially if you are playing Tetris multiplayer somewhat more casually. I definitely used to play a lot of online Tetris with friends. (Also, although it wasn't something I played a whole ton, I did spend a few hours on Tetris 99. I wasn't really the greatest at it because I'm just not that good at spamming setups but I was able to net a few wins.)

Yeah, 1v1 TGM didn't leave a good first impression on me because the items seemed wild and gimmicky, something designed for casual play, not competitive. But I eventually came around, mostly after finding out how the garbage system works. I've played quite of bit of TGM2 on Fightcade, and while some individual games come down to item craziness, usually people play FT3 or FT5 matches, where the luck of a single game usually doesn't decide the match (and if it did, it was a close match otherwise). I like the tension and surprises that items can add, even if it comes at the cost of balance sometimes.

I played a decent amount of Puyo Puyo back in the day (mostly Tsu), but lost interest for two reasons:

1.) I had nobody to play against, and the AI in the old games wasn't very good. Neither of these are issues now though, with online play and much better AI.

2.) I could never get past the beginner phase. Making 4-5 chains really fast was usually good enough to beat the AI in the old versions, so I stagnated there. But that doesn't work against modern AI, and certainly not against humans. But I had no idea how to make the jump from beginner to intermediate; strategy just felt fundamentally different, and hard for me to figure out. Maybe I just never found good resources for learning that (this was 20+ years ago, probably much more out there now).

But yeah, it's a shame it never really took off in the west. Highly underrated game.

Honestly that is probably the one big fault of Puyo Puyo: Puyo Puyo Tsu (and onward) has an obscenely challenging learning curve which will undoubtedly have one plateauing a lot. If you want to be able to make larger chains you need to learn how to build transitions. But if you want to build large chains in actual matches with an opponent who is good enough to watch your board, you also need to be able to build transitions safely and efficiently, which is why a lot of people do GTR as soon as possible. It took me a few years to get to a point where I felt basically just mediocre, and then I plateaued hard. To get better I'd undoubtedly need to hone my muscle memory for how to more efficiently use pieces and build more parts of the chain at once without breaking it or leaving myself vulnerable. I don't think I'll ever be all that great, but it was a lot of fun.