I have been working on this idea I have had for a long time now. The idea is a different game mode for Tetris that I have never seen done before, so I figured I will try it out. Every time I have seen multiplayer Tetris it is where each player has their own screen with their own blocks and they compete to get the most lines which will usually drop block onto the other players screen. This works well and has been copied by many other similar puzzle games for their multiplayer features. What I wanted to try was having 2 player playing on the same screen at the same time, so that they have to work together to create lines while at the same time competing for who gets to clear the line and get the points.
Playing the game I think is pretty fun but the biggest issue I have run into with the design of how the game plays is how to best determine a winner. Right now it goes by whoever clears the most lines, but this makes for the situation where one player can get one line and then cause the game to end and they win. What I did to try and prevent this was add a score penalty for being the one to trigger the lose condition. Right now the penalty is - 10 lines, but that just means you only need an 11 line lead and we are back to the same issue. Maybe this is why I have never seen this game mode before, I cannot come up with a clever way of handling the scoring to where it is beneficial to keep going and try to get the highest score possible. I did also make a 2 player co-op game mode where both players are on the same board but lines only count toward 1 total score so they can see how well the can do together.
Since the game was made in Flash (I wanted to learn ActionScript 3.0) You can play it just below. Feel free to give me any feedback you have. The game is mostly just a proof of concept so its lacking actual art, and sound. I also would like to change how rotation that ends in collision works. Currently if you rotate into a position where you would collide with something, it just prevents you from rotating. What I would like is for it to try and push your block away from what its colliding with and allow the rotation to happen if possible. I will probably make that work soon.
Also, if you can come up with a clever name that doesn't rhyme with Tetris, I would appreciate it.
Controls:
Player 1 Player 2
W Up
A S D Left Down Right
W and Up rotate the piece (only rotating one way, not sure on the best way to lay out the keys for 2 player being able to rotate both way. Please comment if you have suggestions on this!)
S and Down Arrow drop the piece fast.
A, D Left and Right move the pieces left and right.
