Show HN: Lazy Tetris

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reception & concept

  • Many found the “no-gravity” / low-stress variant surprisingly fun and relaxing, especially for people or kids who dislike time pressure in classic Tetris.
  • Some initially dismissed it as bad game design, then realized the appeal after playing longer.
  • A few felt it was still stressful or tedious (e.g., manual dragging, issues with controls) and suggested it’s not truly “lazy.”

Controls, UX, and feature requests

  • Non-intuitive elements: needing to press “clear” to remove full rows, hidden ghost-piece toggle, unclear keyboard shortcuts, and confusion about which key clears lines.
  • Repeated requests for:
    • Ghost/landing shadow (exists but off by default; users want it more discoverable).
    • Keyboard shortcut for “clear.”
    • Auto-clear option and auto-drop when a dragged piece hits the bottom.
    • Separate rotation keys (clockwise/counterclockwise) and rotation-in-place parity with official Tetris.
    • Larger or cleared hold queue on reset, undo that restores the pre-drop position, undo that also affects hold.
    • Option to see more upcoming pieces for lookahead practice, score/competition mode, and possibly progressive gravity or complete removal of gravity (a “fix here” button).

Piece randomization & difficulty

  • Several players noticed long runs without specific pieces (e.g., L or I), inferring purely random generation.
  • Multiple suggestions to use a 7-bag or TGM-style history-based generator to reduce frustration and emphasize chill play.

Bugs and technical issues

  • Reports of: ghost not updating after clears, drag gesture sticking on walls instead of sliding, random rotation behavior on Firefox Android, selected text interfering with drag, WebGL-disabled black screen, and full black screen on some Firefox setups.

Naming, trademarks, and legality

  • Strong advice to remove “Tetris”/“-tris” from the name.
  • Substantial subthread on The Tetris Company’s aggressive trademark and trade-dress enforcement, past DMCA takedowns, and court decisions about tetromino shapes and “look and feel.”

Platform, monetization, and openness

  • Debate over native app vs. web/PWA; some prefer web purity, others want an app mainly for monetization and convenience.
  • Interest in open-sourcing; the author indicates plans to release the code.

AI-assisted development & meta

  • The author describes “vibe coding” the game with AI tools on a phone, plus manual performance tuning.
  • Some discussion around previous AI-generated posts and attention-seeking behavior.

Broader reflections & comparisons

  • Comparisons to other Tetris variants (Zen modes, brutal generators, ultra-fast Grand Master, braille-based and “fight gravity” clones, a physical board-game version).
  • One commenter draws analogies between playing this variant and startup decision-making and technical debt.