TGM actually has a pretty interesting 1v1 system. I wish it was more popular.
Most other Tetris games (all that I've played, at least) throw randomized garbage at the opponent. It scales with the number of lines you clear, but it always has a one column gap in a random position, no control over that.
But TGM's garbage is deterministic. Basically, imagine taking the lines you just cleared, but remove the piece that completed them. That missing piece will be the gap. Flip what's left upside down and add it to the bottom of your opponent's stack.
Now you have full control over the position and shape of the garbage you send!
This adds a nice layer of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive since you need to constantly watch your opponent's stack and act accordingly. You want to add garbage where your opponent will struggle to clear it while also being on the lookout for what kind of garbage they'll be sending you and try to play around it.
And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games), as well as just add some exciting or funny turnarounds. There's also a timing element to triggering the items, which adds even more strategy.
I absolutely do think TGM versus mode is interesting. I'm not sure how to feel about it, but the lack of random garbage is a very big plus.
> And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games),
This seems to be a tricky thing to balance in competitive games. It's boring if the more skilled player wins every single match even in fairly close matchups, but it's also frustrating if any specific win/loss is dictated specifically by random chance or "unfair" game mechanics. This seems to essentially force game design to go a little off the path and overcomplicate things a little to try to make the game more interesting.
I strongly recommend taking a look at Puyo Puyo (particularly Tsu) if you are a competitive puzzle game enjoyer. It is a seriously good multiplayer puzzle game. Where Tetris is an excellent single player game and a good multiplayer game, Puyo Puyo is an excellent multi player game. You can see the game design issues play out especially over the early iterations of it; they pretty much nail the formula in Tsu, so most of the changes from thereon just kind of add additional complications that can make the game a bit more interesting and add some ways that someone can feasibly win a match against a better opponent.
Among the many puzzle games people play somewhat competitively (Tetris, Panel de Pon, Dr. Mario even,) I think Puyo Puyo is the one that deserves much more attention. Not that I think the game design behind Tetris multiplayer shouldn't be iterated on, but after seeing and studying high level Puyo Puyo play, it just makes it feel like Tetris multiplayer will never be able to have the same amount of depth. Of course, it's still plenty enjoyable, especially if you are playing Tetris multiplayer somewhat more casually. I definitely used to play a lot of online Tetris with friends. (Also, although it wasn't something I played a whole ton, I did spend a few hours on Tetris 99. I wasn't really the greatest at it because I'm just not that good at spamming setups but I was able to net a few wins.)
Yeah, 1v1 TGM didn't leave a good first impression on me because the items seemed wild and gimmicky, something designed for casual play, not competitive. But I eventually came around, mostly after finding out how the garbage system works. I've played quite of bit of TGM2 on Fightcade, and while some individual games come down to item craziness, usually people play FT3 or FT5 matches, where the luck of a single game usually doesn't decide the match (and if it did, it was a close match otherwise). I like the tension and surprises that items can add, even if it comes at the cost of balance sometimes.
I played a decent amount of Puyo Puyo back in the day (mostly Tsu), but lost interest for two reasons:
1.) I had nobody to play against, and the AI in the old games wasn't very good. Neither of these are issues now though, with online play and much better AI.
2.) I could never get past the beginner phase. Making 4-5 chains really fast was usually good enough to beat the AI in the old versions, so I stagnated there. But that doesn't work against modern AI, and certainly not against humans. But I had no idea how to make the jump from beginner to intermediate; strategy just felt fundamentally different, and hard for me to figure out. Maybe I just never found good resources for learning that (this was 20+ years ago, probably much more out there now).
But yeah, it's a shame it never really took off in the west. Highly underrated game.
Honestly that is probably the one big fault of Puyo Puyo: Puyo Puyo Tsu (and onward) has an obscenely challenging learning curve which will undoubtedly have one plateauing a lot. If you want to be able to make larger chains you need to learn how to build transitions. But if you want to build large chains in actual matches with an opponent who is good enough to watch your board, you also need to be able to build transitions safely and efficiently, which is why a lot of people do GTR as soon as possible. It took me a few years to get to a point where I felt basically just mediocre, and then I plateaued hard. To get better I'd undoubtedly need to hone my muscle memory for how to more efficiently use pieces and build more parts of the chain at once without breaking it or leaving myself vulnerable. I don't think I'll ever be all that great, but it was a lot of fun.
This reminds me of my favorite bug at my first programming job.
I worked on a system that processed benefits. We generated a lot of reports, one of which being the overage dependent report, listing all children that were over the age limit for that insurance plan.
We had one case where a newborn was showing up on that report, and for end users, there was no indication why. DOB was 20-something days ago, not 20-something years ago.
Lo and behold, the paperwork was somehow filed before the baby was born, and our date calculation method was returning an unsigned int. So the logic was resulting in an age of -1 (since DOB was prior coverage start date), which wrapped around to 255, which was obviously higher than whatever the max dependent age was.
I spent some time debugging insurance systems, and bugs exactly like that were everywhere. There are lots of date comparisons in those kinds of systems, and the order in which those events happen are almost always described to happen in a certain order, but there's tons of exceptions for every case.
Monday morning task: reply to this tab from Friday afternoon, haha.
Quite a few puzzle games came out in the late 80's and early 90's, probably hoping to be the next Tetris, but most of them are pretty forgettable. Nothing else ever really captured that same feeling, and certainly not its broad appeal. It's just so elegantly simple.
I think the ones that have stood the test of time the best are:
Puyo Puyo:
Somewhat similar to the versus mode of Dr. Mario, but a lot faster and with a much higher skill cap. Simple mechanics, but very deep gameplay. Sadly never got a huge following outside of Asia.
Magical Drop III:
Moreso than any other game, this one makes me feel like I'm a machine performing a sorting algorithm. I mean that in the best possible way. Money Puzzle Exchanger is a very similar game that requires more advanced planning.
Puzzle Bobble:
I never got into this series but it frequently shows up on these kinds of recommendation lists.
Tetris Attack:
The name is misleading, it has nothing to do with Tetris and plays nothing like it, but a great puzzle game nonetheless.
Devil Dice is a personal favorite, but never reached the popularity of any of the above.
Some other honorable mentions that I don't know enough to comment on:
I love IPAs, but the market is definitely oversaturated with them. And after a while a lot of them just kind of blend together, so over time I've lost interest in trying new ones and mostly just stick to the solid ones I'm familiar with (Bells Two Hearted Ale or Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA) unless there's something truly unique, Ballast Point Habanero Sculpin being a good example.
Along those lines, I wish more microbreweries would put out sessionable beers that still taste good. Despite the variety of styles, it seems like most beers are in the 6%-7% at least, often more. As much as I love a good stout or IPA, sometimes I want something with lighter body in, say, the 4% ABV range. Guinness is my go-to for that reason even though I think it's just fine, not great. Deschutes Black Butte Porter is the best compromise I've found, but is rarely on tap where I live.
I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer.
I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal.
My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha.
Yeah I don't play the lottery, but I could justify buying a single lottery ticket despite understanding how horrific the odds are.
Since you'll almost certainly lose, I think the true value is in the fantasy of what you would do with a staggering amount of money. You could do this without buying a ticket, of course, but it feels more real when you have some skin in the game. Mathematically, your odds are still effectively zero, but mentally there's a big difference between effectively zero and actual zero.
Thinking of other consumables in that general price range that provide a short, quick fix of enjoyment (cup of coffee, snack, etc.), $1 for a slightly more vivid dream isn't so crazy to me.
Having said all this, I highly doubt it's the mentality of most lottery players.
The varied art in the old sets made the game feel "big" to me, like it was this giant bazaar of oddities that I was sifting through and piecing together in a unique way. Nowadays it feels more like assembling parts in a carefully curated environment. That's not an entirely bad thing, but a lot of the mystique is lost.
Exactly. I always felt like the world of magic was bigger than my imagination of it, that the cards were a tiny window into an unfathomably strange world. "Eldritch" is maybe the best word I can think of to describe it.
Most other Tetris games (all that I've played, at least) throw randomized garbage at the opponent. It scales with the number of lines you clear, but it always has a one column gap in a random position, no control over that.
But TGM's garbage is deterministic. Basically, imagine taking the lines you just cleared, but remove the piece that completed them. That missing piece will be the gap. Flip what's left upside down and add it to the bottom of your opponent's stack.
Now you have full control over the position and shape of the garbage you send!
This adds a nice layer of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive since you need to constantly watch your opponent's stack and act accordingly. You want to add garbage where your opponent will struggle to clear it while also being on the lookout for what kind of garbage they'll be sending you and try to play around it.
And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games), as well as just add some exciting or funny turnarounds. There's also a timing element to triggering the items, which adds even more strategy.
https://tetris.wiki/TGM_Versus_Mode_Guide