!! SUPER DUPER TETRIS !!

Genre: Arcade

Type: Prototype

Engine: Unreal

Tools: Blueprints

Role: Designer/Programmer

Team Size: Solo

Super Tetris is a project that I took on with the purpose of better understanding blueprints and Unreal Engine. In order to develop my technical skills and publish a short and polished game. From its conception the goal of the project was to attempt to re-create a mechanic that I was already familiar with. After short-listing a few ideas I realized that older classic game titles had simple gameplay loops and easy to dissect mechanics.

And what game is more classic that Tetris?

Design Challenges

The main goal of the project was to develop my technical skills, there were still important design questions to answer

Iteration:

The board had to be reduced, my first approach was to try to match the approximate number of pieces needed to score a Tetris in 2D and try to translate that to the number of pieces needed in 3d.

This did not work, it was too difficult to come up with a meaningful value for the number of pieces needed for a Tetris for either the 2D or 3D version.

But it led me to use time until Tetris as a better goal for adjusting the board size.

Final Version:

Although Tetris but in 3D is a novel idea it is by no means ground breaking. Players will likely only play until they loose for the first time or make a mistake that ruins their “set up”.

Players felt exasperated because the gameplay was slow and they didn’t want to wait/rebuild back up to the fun part. !!Super Duper Tetris!! has to be tuned for shorter games and frequent & obtainable Tetris’s.

Many playtests showed players quitting or resetting early on in gameplay if

• They were unable to score a Tetris or double Tetris within the first 90 seconds.

• They made a mistake that blocked a big score they spent time setting up for.

• Got the same block 4 or more times in a row

10×10

Initial Prototype