Post #4

 Sorry for the uncreative title, I couldn't think of one.

Once again, I failed to beat my Tetris high score of 543,997. However, the reason for this is that rather than attempting to beat my score, I tried something else.

The ability to hold pieces is vitally important in Tetris. For anyone who doesn't know, this involves placing your current piece in a storage area to save for later and instead using the next piece. If there was already a piece being held, that piece will be swapped out instead. This is a great strategy for when you don't have anywhere to drop your current piece, as it ensures that the player always has at least two options for which move they want to make. So I asked myself, what if I removed this feature that is vitally important for the balance of the game?

In order to achieve the highest possible score without holding any pieces (by the end of the game, the hold area should be empty), I first needed to come up with a new strategy. Usually, one column is left empty, with the intent of dropping in a long piece and clearing four rows at once (called a "Tetris"). However, without the ability to save a long piece for this purpose, there is no guarantee that this strategy will work. In addition, you are fully dependent on the completely random order of the pieces, so the extra column should probably be used for additional space instead.

One of the first things I noticed when attempting this challenge was that you have significantly fewer opportunities to correct your mistakes. So the obvious strategy here is to simply not make them. While not being able to hold pieces was hard at first, I eventually got used to it. Using the strategies above, I was able to achieve a score of 309,923. (Below is photographic proof in case you don't believe me.)

I'm not exactly sure how to end this post, so leave a comment about anything Tetris-related, and you can reasonably expect another high-quality post next week.