To Tetris, or Not To Tetris...

A couple of months ago, I mentioned this game in passing..
http://agameaweek.com/2009/08/y2w2-tetripong/
And immediately started looking into remaking it.

It was just after I'd released ChuckABall, was midway through BounceABall, and considered this as a possible extra "ABall" game to fit alongside them.
.. Then I got sidetracked by the NeonBike game, and I didn't bother going back.

.. Then last week, Tetris Battle came out on OUYA, and I was going "aw, dangit.. Missed my chance!!" and gave up on the game, due to basic "The Tetris Company would sue my butt off" reasons.

But over the course of the past week, many things have interfered in that decision..
People have whinged and griped about the fact that Tetris Battle doesn't even have an honest to goodness Endless mode.
People have complained to me that it doesn't quite feel like proper Tetris.
And god knows how much I hate that "you can see the next 70,000 blocks!", and "Here's where it'll land!!!" crap..

I'm currently wondering what to make for next week's game, and my head's chanting "Tetripong!!" over and over again..

I'm not sure what to do.

Discuss!!

~
Haha.

Do it :)

As you are the dev for chuck-a-ball and now you talk of tetris you remind me of this one PSP homebrew game that came out as almost a middle-finger to the tetris community at the time called 'anti-tetris' it's where all of the blocks have physics and they can bounce against the walls and react to inactive tetris blocks on the bottom. You can actually spin the blocks so fast that it literally makes all of the stationary blocks explode out of place which usually gets a game over if one of them goes off the top of the screen. Since it was a joke of course it could never get it to give you a line no matter how delicate you were so in effect that homebrew was broken.

http://youtu.be/bBCAab2xWzU

Anyhow. A physics based tetris game would be stupid hard for the player. But sometimes hard is okay. It throws people off when you tell them you could only get three lines in place. They laugh at first until they too realize how hard it is!

Before tetris challange which i absolutely loathe. Ouya had another clone of tetris. Bobs game. Which I thought was awesome just a shame there was no versus mode.

The question if you should or should not do tetris really does not come down to a question of if there is enough of a certain type of game. Because that has not stopped the flappy bird clones! It comes down to how you can change up the style of the game to make it unique again. As for the argument dealing with the purity of tetris. Unless you are playing it on a old VAX system with a VT100 terminal arranging monochrome blocks. No one has the right to question purity of any tetris-like game.:)

As an addition to a versus mode you could also look into co-op mode where two people have to work together clearing a board as multiple tetris pieces come down at the same time.

Anyhow. Just my two cents for what it is worth. Good luck man!

Follow your head. Tetripong.

Please do! I would play it.

Avoid using "Tetris" in the title. The Tetris Company is litigous, and the strongest claim they can make is the trademark claim on the name.

Just call it Oddly Shaped Block Game. :)