Show HN: Lazy Tetris
140 comments
·May 27, 2025admtal
Thank you all for playing and leaving such great suggestions and comments!!
I will likely add many of these suggestions over the weekend.
- Multi bag instead of fully random
- No auto clear on game end
- Clear hold on game reset
- Rename to LAZY PUBLIC DOMAIN BLOCK GAME
also, I need better UX or something, because some of the suggestions are already implemented but it’s prob not initiative/ hard to find.
Clicking on the ghost enables the ghost piece. I personally hate ghost pieces, and I always disable them, so because it’s my game, I have it off by default.
Tapping left side and right side rotate left and right.
Keyboard Up and Shift rotate left and right.
Delete key does UNDO
Enter does HOLD
You can touch drag or click drag to move your piece, even dragging up.
Oh, also you can drag from anywhere, you don’t have to actually click the piece.
You can two-finger tap to DROP (that’s how I play, it’s so satisfying)
Three-finger-tap is HOLD
You can save to home screen on iOS and it should play as a full screen app.
If you get a “Tetris” (four line clear at once) a secret gift button appears, but it’s just a link to my book, because everything I do is soulless cash grab.
I’m lazy, and built this game sitting on the couch on my phone using a mix of rosebud.ai and ChatGPT. I also had to get in my laptop to do performance optimizations manually, that part sucked, it was like real work. But otherwise, vibe-coding is fun.
This game is made specifically for me and how I like to play, and I’m glad others enjoyed it!
jchw
Multi bag is probably over-complicating things. You can take a note from TGM and just keep a running window of the last n pieces and reroll m times until you get one that wasn't in the window or run out of tries. I think n is usually 4 and m is usually 6. This works great, is easy to implement and doesn't feel too predictable (i.e. like single bag does.) Also you can preload the window with two S's and two Z's to lower the odds of getting those first, since that's annoying :)
jedberg
> Clicking on the ghost enables the ghost piece. I personally hate ghost pieces, and I always disable them, so because it’s my game, I have it off by default.
I love this. You made a game for you, if others like it, great!
> Enter does HOLD
When I got to my first hold I had to go back to the Home Screen to see this, because I'd forgotten. And clicking "hold" with the mouse didn't do anything. Maybe have a list of the keys on the side? Or under where it says "hold"?
> If you get a “Tetris” (four line clear at once) a secret gift button appears, but it’s just a link to my book, because everything I do is soulless cash grab.
I might actually get the book! Looking at the sample it looks fun. Could be a card game too.
> This game is made specifically for me and how I like to play, and I’m glad others enjoyed it!
I did! It's great for people with kids, because you can just stop in the middle.
keepamovin
Your stuff is very fun. Look at this, this crazy little thing (by same person): https://passwordbasket.com :)
hoosieree
I never before considered that a password generator could be fun. My mind has been changed. Now I believe they should be fun.
furyofantares
That's excellent. I'm enjoying trying to generate the password "passwordpassword". (To be clear, the best I've gotten on default settings is Pa.s and then gobbledgook rage-restart.)
redbell
Cool, and it might be cooler if the generated password's characters go straight to the basket. Just my two cents.
Also, this reminds me of The Password Game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36493715
raydev
I was shocked by how hard I laughed when I "generated" the password. Great work.
admtal
Thank you so much, that is all I want to hear in the world
airstrike
It genuinely made me smile!
izietto
I laughed so hard I'm worried I bothered my neighbours!!! This is terrific!!!
simlevesque
That just put a smile on my face.
neonwatty
this is absolutely amazing
hnlmorg
Played for a little while and didn’t get a single L piece. I’m guessing you’re picking pieces randomly?
If you wanted to further reduce the stress then you could use the single bag system (same link as below, bottom of the page).
admtal
Fantastic idea, thank you for sharing, will add multi bag
freeone3000
I love this! It really allows you to examine the role of time pressure in gaming, and why tuning it is so key -- having too much time makes it significantly easier, to the point where it wasn't fun for me. Which is brilliant!
enahs-sf
i had some interesting thoughts while playing about how this aligns with the work of startups.
Even with the constraints of time and gravity removed and with undo, it's still quite easy to make choices that keep the structure up but leave gaps which are hard to fill in. These end up leading to cruft that's hard to get rid of.
With some degree of ability to look ahead, it's hard to break away from the human psychology of aligning the structure to your expectations for a certain piece, that may or may not be coming in the near future. somewhat analogous to building for an audience that may not be there or may never come.
Despite having all advantages, it's still quite possible to paint yourself into a corner and fail.
One can learn a lot from this game if they take the time to observe it.
lynx97
While we are at unconventional tetris implementations: I wrote a cosmopolitan libc based tetris clone for Braille display users. IOW, pieces "fall" horizontally, and blocks are rendered with (unicode) braille.
https://github.com/mlang/betris
Big thanks to @jart, cosmo is a godsent for cross-platform TUI stuff.
alnwlsn
I made one once which was just like normal Tetris, but you could fight against gravity and move the pieces upwards. It actually doesn't change the gameplay that much, because eventually you progress far enough that you just can't push 'up' fast enough, and gravity wins.
tantalor
Feature request: to make it even lazier show a preview of where the piece is going to end up when it lands, like a ghost image
fellowniusmonk
There is a ghost toggle on the right side.
heisenbit
I prefered moving the piece down into the right place. I found it a bit annoying and also not intuitive to have to press ‚drop‘ for a piece which was down already and which i released. Would be nice if it auto-dropped on drag release when at the bottom.
Last but not least: Fun and relaxing.
irjustin
Still managed to kill myself trying to do a "full screen" tetris. Somehow I always end up finding ways to add the stress back in.
em-bee
why is that stressful? i find a puzzle like figuring out how to fill the screen fun and relaxing.
i'd like to see a few improvements for that though:
don't end the game just because a piece touches the top row. allow to continue playing as long as there is room for more pieces to be placed. (i just noticed that doesn't happen all the time. maybe only when the next piece doesn't fit into the spot to be placed)
but even if there is no more room, don't end the game when there are rows that still can be cleared. the game should only end when no other action is possible. and ideally, don't automatically clear the field when the game ends. let me admire the result, and add a reset button to clear manually instead.
other features that could be nice: when starting over the hold should probably be cleared. a bigger hold would also be nice. and how about a score? relaxing doesn't mean it can't be competitive. i mean we all experience stress differently. i find being pressured for time to be stressful, but i don't mind a hard puzzle as long as i have time to solve it and am not losing progress when i make a mistake.
i managed to fill 17 rows without clearing any before the game ended. can anyone beat that? you'd have to be very lucky with the pieces you get at the end :-)
op00to
Somehow this is an apt metaphor for life.
cshimmin
There's a board-game version of Tetris that I've been playing with my toddler, and is pretty much the same low-stress approach. It's also multiplayer (the next piece everyone must use is decided by drawing cards from a deck). The only shortcoming is that you can't do the maneuver where you slide a piece sideways just as it hits the bottom to slot it into place under another piece. Highly recommend!
stevage
"lazy" doesn't feel like the right name. More like low stress. I really enjoyed it.
metayrnc
Wow this is such a great idea. Also the controls on mobile were top notch. No issues with random zooming, text selection, weird scrolling etc. Felt like a downloaded app.
I made a tetris variant
Aims to remove all stress, and focus the game on what I like the best - stacking.
No timer, no score, no gravity. Move to the next piece when you are ready, and clear lines when you are ready.
Separate mobile + desktop controls