Tetris Guide
Stack falling tetrominoes and clear lines, with next-piece preview, hold and levels.
A short companion for Tetris: when it is useful, what it expects, and what to check before using the result.
What it does
A full Tetris in a single page: seven-bag randomiser, next-piece preview, hold slot, a faint ghost showing where the piece will land, levels and scoring. Arrow keys move and rotate, Down soft-drops, Space hard-drops, C holds and P pauses. The board is drawn with DOM cells rather than a canvas, so it stays crisp at any size and needs no plugins.
Use the tool
Open Tetris, add the input the tool asks for, run it, and check the output before using it elsewhere.
Input and output
- Input: text.
- Output: text.
- Category: Games.
Privacy and processing
Processing happens locally in your browser. This tool does not upload the input to ilham.dev.
Questions
How does the piece randomiser work?
It uses a seven-bag: all seven tetrominoes are shuffled into a bag and dealt one at a time, then a new bag is shuffled. That means you never wait more than twelve pieces for a given shape, which is fairer than pure random drops.
What is the ghost piece?
The faint outline at the bottom of the falling piece. It shows where the piece will come to rest if you hard-drop right now, so you can judge a placement before committing to it.
How is scoring calculated?
Clearing one line is 100, two is 300, three is 500 and four is 800, multiplied by the current level. Soft-dropping adds one point per row and a hard drop adds two per row. Level rises every ten lines and speeds the fall up.
What does the hold slot do?
Press C to park the current piece and bring back whatever was in the hold slot, or to pull the piece out of it if the slot was empty. You can hold only once per piece, so it is a way to defer an awkward shape rather than to cycle freely.
Why is the board made of divs instead of a canvas?
A DOM grid keeps the theme's flat, crisp look at every zoom level, is selectable by the same styling as the rest of the site and needs no drawing code. It also means the game works even where canvas is unavailable.
Related guide
For broader background, see Browser Games and Practice Tools.