Hello HN!<p>You can read this [1] blog post if you want to know more about some ideas that I have for this thing.
This is just an experiment right now, there isn't any real game (yet).
Any feedback would be appreciated, do you think this could become something that would be fun to play?<p>[1] <a href="https://unit520.net/posts/dead-trees-an-absurdist-block-laying-game-prototype/" rel="nofollow">https://unit520.net/posts/dead-trees-an-absurdist-block-layi...</a>
I think this is great and a lot of fun. The only improvement I could suggest is that it only seems to clear the <i>bottom</i> line. If I have an incomplete bottom line, but the row above it settles and fills up, it never clears and the rows just keep stacking higher.
If you hammer away at the boxes such that it fills up the entire screen the weight of all those boxes is enough to crush the ones at the bottom.<p>Coolness to the max!
This is an amazing idea. So original and yet so simple and "obvious" in a way... Excellent execution, too. Bravo.<p>(I didn't understand one could interact with the fallen pieces until I read the comments here. Maybe some hint somewhere would help...?)<p>(Also, parameters on the left are distracting; better have good defaults and let the user play. Being able to move the pieces with the gyro when on mobile (as suggested in another comment) would be great.)
Love it. Tetris is such a well worn cultural institution that its ripe for parody.<p>Reminded me of this Japanese comedy routine involving Tetris[0]<p>Totally doesn't need any Japanese language skills to enjoy<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpi3JbQiWU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpi3JbQiWU</a>
Thank you all for your nice comments and suggestions, be assured that I read every comment even if I didn't reply to you personally!<p>I'm glad you liked it and will continue to work on it some more, you had some great suggestions that I certainly want to try out.
A funny thing happens if you just press the down arrow and keep it pressed. The game area quickly fills up with squares, and then it just continues to add more shapes until, after a minute or so, the whole page turns black.
Love this! I tried this on my phone and instinctively tried to turn my phone to make the pieces slide around (after seeing the falling/sliding physics), expecting them to react to the gyro in the phone. Then realized, right, this is a web app!<p>Great work, fun!
Thoughts:<p>1. Tetris -- Obviously different than Tetris<p>2. Not Tetris -- <a href="https://stabyourself.net/nottetris2/" rel="nofollow">https://stabyourself.net/nottetris2/</a> Similar, but less destructive. Not-Tetris is closer to the original Tetris.<p>3. Tricky Towers -- <a href="https://www.trickytowers.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.trickytowers.com/</a> . More similar to this game than Tetris. Tricky Towers blocks aren't destructable, but the physics and very "limited" platform space makes a real game. Special powers (ex: vines) to "solidify" some blocks together really make building higher-and-higher better. The "puzzle" mode of trying to get the most number of blocks with the least height is also very fun.<p>4. This game -- This is a sandbox for now, the unique part is "impact physics" which can break apart blocks if enough weight / damage were dealt to them. Not a real game yet, but clearly on the path to something fun here. Not sure what the gameplay loop should be, but Tricky Towers is the closest game to maybe draw inspiration from?
My favorite variation on ‘silly Tetris’ is Triptych: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0</a><p>Quite similar to the OP actually in terms of physics, but with three-in-a-row as the game mechanic.<p>The game can be found on Internet Archive, as usual with old-ass games: <a href="https://archive.org/details/trpsetup" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/trpsetup</a><p>BTW, the left panel in ‘Dead Trees’ seems to have some problem with Retina screens: I can barely discern anything on it. Perhaps the author would want to apply some kind of zoom to compensate.
Funny, did not understand how up play on iPad (clicking only let the blocks go down).
I think there are some small bugs in the code, see image (several rows full but not clearing, and there is a block on row 4+5 that overlaps with the full(!) row 4 and the (non-full) row 5.
Link: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm1qbow9h7fvsmw/20220507_093125.jpg?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm1qbow9h7fvsmw/20220507_093125.jp...</a>
I enjoyed it.<p>It seems like only full rows in the bottom are counted or something? Or maybe I had a subtle alignment issue. But eventually I got a small gap at the bottom. I ended up with a bunch of full rows, all the way up. Eventually the blocks got over my "dropping point." So, I created a bunch of blocks all at once near the top, compressing all rows below. This caused something to squish into the bottom row, freeing up a little space. 10/10, best compressive tetris mechanism ever.<p>A shake button would be nice.
This is fun! Creative idea and nicely made.<p><a href="https://dro.pm/k.png" rel="nofollow">https://dro.pm/k.png</a> -- Is this a bug, or are you basically game over once you have a gap in your bottom row and the rest will never line up perfectly enough to disappear?<p>Edit: resolved it by layering a third full row, then smashing it by luck in the right way to make something drop down to the bottom one. So yes, bottom row always just needs to be filled.<p>Edit2: Some tricks<p>- drag a block<p>- hold down the arrow down button (until the page goes completely blank and you get Aborted(Assertion failed: draw_list->_VtxCurrentIdx < (1 << 16) && "Too many vertices in ImDrawList using 16-bit indices. Read comment above", at: ../extern/include/imgui/imgui.cpp,4269,AddDrawListToDrawData))<p>- play with the controls on the left of course :)<p>Also loving that there is no loss condition. The game doesn't tell you when you've lost, you can decide that for yourself!
This is really cool but I have some feedback: being able to drag the pieces removed all of the challenge, so it wasn’t really fun; only the bottom row will clear - this kind of breaks the game when not “cheating” with manually dragging pieces.<p>Overall, I think if you fixed those two points this would be a great and challenging game.
Feels like a real game to me, I spent good 15 minutes trying to clear the remaining 2 blocks, which is supposedly an impossible state. Turns out when you hold space you randomly lose blocks to the void so you can shift it back to multiplies of 12s by reoding it, meta! I did get the satisfaction of winning the level i created myself by cleaning up the mess back to blank state manually.
Pointless & frivolous. I love it.<p>There used to be some plugin where you could click a button & be shown a random site that someone had tagged as being interesting for some reason. It was a great way to find all sorts of stuff off the the beaten path like this, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called to see if it still exists.<p>Does anyone remember it, or whether or not something similar exists today? I used it around the time Web 2.0 was just coalescing into a major thing.<p>EDIT: StumbleUpon! Unfortunately it seems a bit closed off, gated by a login & invite code. And the items on the public site look like they're just photos...
I didn't know how to trigger <a href="https://unit520.net/deadtrees/" rel="nofollow">https://unit520.net/deadtrees/</a> at first (focus the page then use arrow keys). Oddly the first page load hung at a static canvas that stretched as I resized the window, while reloading worked. F12 showed a (false positive) warning:<p>> wasm streaming compile failed: TypeError: WebAssembly: Response has unsupported MIME type 'application/octet-stream' expected 'application/wasm'<p>Is this something you want to fix?
I always loved this kind of game and playing with the libraries demos (IIRC box2d) back in the day.<p>Is this using a port of that?
I wish there were more not gaming uses for these kinds of interfaces.
Thank you for this, bookmarked this one. Going to be an awesome resource for slapping in the face to all those evangelists that chant "browser games are the future" because once you keep pressing down arrow and the screen is filled with rectangles it crawls to a stop at several thousand of them, while a similar implementation in native C++ using Unreal Engine 5 will not break a sweat even at dozens of millions on screen.
I had fun going "full auto" with the left, right, down keys. It fills up the screen with a bunch of exploding boxes at first and then alternates between stacking boxes up as it jitters and suddenly wiping out a bunch of rows on the bottom. Super fun.
I keep wanting to tilt my phone to influence how the blocks shift around and fall. Very cool! Graphics and responsiveness are truly excellent. Impressive game code, especially on a mobile browser. Can you tell a little more about how this was made?
I think this is pretty entertaining. Definitely a nice twist. I get the impression it might need to be made a bit harder somehow. I'm not having problems clearing levels (though I'm definitely enjoying doing it).
This reminds me of what I recall was called "analog tetris", where you had pixel perfect control of where you dropped the bricks. Aligning them to fill holes was really hard!
This is fun. If you turn restitution all the way up and friction all the way down, you can get a passable simulation of a liquid, and then (when temperature is increased) a gas.
This game reminds me of Triptych (<a href="http://chroniclogic.com/triptych.htm" rel="nofollow">http://chroniclogic.com/triptych.htm</a>).
> Any feedback would be appreciated, do you think this could become something that would be fun to play?<p>Combine this with Hatetris, perhaps? Oh, wait, you said "fun"...
Reminds me of the game Tryptich:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0</a>