vitetris

About

Tetris is a puzzle video game created by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer, in the mid-1980s, in which falling four-block tetrominoes must be arranged to clear horizontal lines; it has since appeared in roughly 220 versions across at least 70 platforms. vitetris is a text-mode (terminal) Tetris clone, playable via the console with full input customization, adjustable piece colours, and network play where both players can independently set their level and height difficulty. Rotation, scoring, levels, and speed aim to resemble the early Nintendo Tetris games, with an added short lock delay. It's distributed under a BSD-style license and runs on Windows, Linux, and DOS; development is currently halted.

How it differs from the original

vitetris adds a short lock delay not present in the earliest Tetris games, giving players slightly more control at higher speeds (though it can't be exploited to stall a piece indefinitely), plus built-in network multiplayer with independently configurable difficulty for each player.

Getting started

Run the game's executable from a terminal (or double-click it on Windows); use the cursor keys to move and rotate, Space to hard-drop, and P or Enter to pause. Two-player games can be played over a network by having one player listen on a port and the other connect to it, or via local Unix domain sockets.

History

vitetris credits an earlier text-mode Tetris implementation called 'tt' (Tetris for Terminals), written by Mike Taylor in 1989, and cites the tetrisconcept.com wiki as a resource used during development.

Media

Additional notes

Gameplay

A gamepad's START button can be configured to act as the Enter key via a config-file option.