I never imagined I'd like playing Tetris on the command line, on a terminal on my phone (termux), but here I am!

I couldn't find any Tetris app on fdroid, and just checked if pkgs had one. Lo and behold! It asked me to run pkgs install vitetris, and when I did, the tetris command was there to launch the game.

It's a two step process, as opposed to just launching an app, but it is very lightweight, no tracking, and FOSS.

For anyone with termux already installed and feeling a bit nostalgic, might be worth trying it out.

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[–] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's wild that there aren't any FOSS Tetris games for Android that have been updated this decade.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    that's a good thing. Tetris is tetris.You code in all the rules, and you're done. any updates made in the last decade would be the types that "improve the user experience" such as allowing you to pay real money to double your chances of getting the l tetromino, a subscription which would remove the unskippable ads you get after every game, and a microtransaction that allows you to pay to play more than one game per day

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    Except tetris is not as stable as you might think
    The current ruleset uses vastly different rotation systems than the games in the early days, or Akira's TGM series.
    Moreover, you can add new features without it being pay 2 win (or even paid), like tetr.io does: ranked matches, leaderboards, tournaments, social interaction, etc... They can also make new rules, like how they recently removed passthrough in online matches.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    You did not ask for an alternative but just for visibility because its awesome: a great tetris clone is Techmino. It is on Github and I am getting it via Obtainium.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And for anyone who hates themselves, it looks like bastet is also available!

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Gotta try this for fifteen minutes then ditch it forever. Never heard of it before, but as they say: curiosity killed the cat!

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 years ago

    Yep... definitely crazy. Tried easy, was thinking I seemed to be pretty smart up to 4 lines. Then it just kept screwing me with two alternating pieces and the holes started. It loves giving you angles that go the wrong way around given your current block layout 😅

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Wow, I didn't know you could run a terminal on Android, I'll check it out, thank you

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I've never been able to find a useful function of it beyond a niche party trick

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I use it for backing up all my photos and videos (the DCIM folder) to my B2 repo using rclone.

    It's genuinely amazing how useful it is.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If you really want your mind blown check out UserLAnd

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    ty, I had fun for 10m 👍

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    also try running the command ssh playnetris.com, it's a server that allows you to play tetris by yourself or online with strangers

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I am the man who arranges the blocks.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nethack is also available on termux. I like to play on my Chromebook when at school.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Nice! I did the same thing until my school figured out how to block Google Play

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah the restrictions on Chromebooks are really annoying. Termux is the only way I can actually program on my chromebook and if they remove that I guess it's time to buy a Thinkpad.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    You can also play Tetris via Emacs.

    https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TetrisMode

    Starting with OS X, every Mac has shipped with Tetris out of the box 🙂.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So cool, I didn't even know it was possible. If you or someone else want to try a tetris app on F-Droid I recommend Blockinger

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago
    [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Does it support hjkl?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    That's cool but looks like an absolute disaster to play with a smartphone keyboard. Or even just the buttons they give.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Have a look at netris also, open source multiplayer tetris that you can play by sshing into playnetris.com (or your own self hosted server

    On termux you have to rebind the rotate buttons as they don't have a default value but on a pc they do

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
    [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    This is IMO the best FOSS Tetris for Android

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