Other puzzle games

[tepples]

It has come to my attention that some people miss me. As some of you are aware, I moved on from Tetris and left Hard Drop over nine months ago. There were three key incidents, two of which happened at about the same time.

In May 2009, when enforcement of exclusive rights became more aggressive, I discontinued development of Lockjaw and LJ65 and began developing something different. Also in May 2009, caffeine shut down TC.com and the community splintered into TC.net and Hard Drop. I didn't really have a place to discuss my next project, a PC game with the same rules as Klax that can be played with a Guitar Hero controller, because apparently the nineties were over and no one there liked Klax. My participation dwindled as I developed Concentration Room, Thwaite, and Zap Ruder for NES, and lately I've been working on Wrecking Ball Boy.

In June 2012, Xio lost in court, and I withdrew certain games from my web site. As I understand the ruling, certain tropes of block puzzle games were deemed unprotectable processes, but the use of the seven one-sided figures made of four squares was exclusively TTC's. If a developer were to change the piece set and field size to work around this, the player's skills would not transfer. The depth of some strategy articles in Hard Drop Wiki bears witness to this. After considering for a moment why I even continued to play, I realized that TTC's business model made it clear that Mr. Pajitnov wasn't entirely serious about wanting the game to become an internationally competitive sport. I was attracted by the sport aspect and left the community once it became clear that that wasn't going to happen. I especially didn't want to support somebody who has expressed a belief that free software destroys the market. Netcraft reports that before HardDrop.com used CloudFlare, it was using Apache on Linux, which is free software.

This leaves block puzzle games where skills aren't expected to transfer from Tetris, such as Klax, Columns, Blockout, Dr. Mario, Kirby's Avalanche/Puyo Pop, SameGame, Zoop, Pac-Attack, Panel de Pon/Puzzle League, Baku Baku/Puzzle Fighter II, Lumines, and the like. I began to brainstorm what these games have in common. If Hard Drop can build a community of fans of those games, I might return to Hard Drop.

So in 2013, what puzzlers other than Tetris do you enjoy?

[Sisu]

Also in May 2009, caffeine shut down TC.com

ITYM June 2009

Klax

I rented the NES version and played the crap out of it for about a week, but it did not really capture my imagination. Ditto for Zoop a few years later. I got hooked on Tetris trying to beat my grandfather's scores on the Microsoft Entertainment Pack version. I do not think there is another action puzzle game that requires so little explanation for almost anyone aged 8 to 80. "Baku Baku? What's that, Sonny?"

On the legal front, I am currently interested in how the Xio decision affects games such as CubeStorm and Quantro which are capable of many configurations, only one of which is 10x20x1 tetromino style.

I want to avoid any kind of legal trouble... but even so, I think Quantro is distinct enough as an expression of those rules in a way Mino apparently wasn't...I've made a deliberate effort to develop a different visual expression of the underlying rules, and to change the rules themselves where appropriate. I don't think I've infringed... I guess we'll see whether TTC disagrees.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/x...o_teach_myself/

Wrecking Ball Boy:
Love it. Love everything about it. The Bionic Commando influence, your sick Weeble fetish, how he kicks the L-block to become an I-block. I probably will not play it though. I would rather go down in flames fighting the good fight for the game that has stolen my heart.  

[Kitaru]

Some of the games you mentioned have existing communities of varying levels of activity. That could be a place to start.

Kirby's Avalanche/Puyo Pop

puyonexus.net

Panel de Pon/Puzzle League

tetrisattack.org

Columns, Blockout

I don't know community sites for these per se, but I know some Japanese players such as SQR, Koryan, SAL, etc. enjoy these games. They often post scores and discussion on Twitter, and SQR and SAL have guides to Blockout on their websites.

If Hard Drop can build a community of fans of those games, I might return to Hard Drop.

It would be nice to have such a subforum, but I don't know if Hard Drop currently has the audience to support these niche interests. (It's on the to-do list at TC.Net, fwiw.)

So in 2013, what puzzlers other than Tetris do you enjoy?

I'm currently looking forward to the Puzzle Fighter tournament at Fanime. People have kind of dropped off playing it at the arcade on campus, but a decent number of people come out to rep it at the convention.

I have a Puyo Puyo 2 arcade board, but I'm still a pretty poor player, haha. I just can't seem to chain consistently at my current level of skill.

There are a lot of other niche puzzle games I'd like to work on some more. I just purchased a copy of Star Sweep from a used game store for $4, though I have to say I'm a bit intimidated after having seen colour_thief's performance! I also have Magical Drop 3 on MVS cart and would like to pick up Money Idol Exhanger and Pochi to Nyaa  as well... although the carts for the latter two games are more like $100~120 as opposed to $30~50.

[Extruderx]

So in 2013, what puzzlers other than Tetris do you enjoy?

Jewelry Master.

[Kitaru]

Yes, I thought to mention Jewelry Master, but it slipped my mind. (Well, I thought to mention a good handful of other games as well, but there is only so much time I can spend repping niche games per post!) I mostly play the Xbox Live Indie Games version, Jewelry Master Twinkle. I need to spend more time with that one as well... I don't know if scoring was fully worked out for the current version of JM PC, but the JMT scoring stuff is fairly well-understood.

[UJS3]

I used to play Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine a lot, it's basically a copy of puyo puyo. Afraid my skills are rusty nowadays.

[grillaface]

I've got one y'all have never seen.

It's my love letter to Tetris & Dr. Mario, designed specifically with touch interfaces in mind.

Floris - anticipated launch date is in 2 days on 4/18/2013.  (It's in Apple's review queue now so barring unforseen complications it will launch by this weekend).

I built this by myself so that Tetris fans could have a good game on the platform (I personally don't like the way EA did the controls on the iOS version of Tetris...

More videos and the game guide / rules are here:
http://oxandcoon.com/news/

Lemme know what you think - there's some pretty crazy stuff you can do (double rings, back to backs etc)....

[zaphod77]

I do believe that XIO case was not very well argued.

It's obvious to anyone who's actually analysed the game that a lot of stuff is scenes a faire.

1) playfield twice as tall as wide.
2) 90 degree rotation.
3) pieces less than 4 long make the game way too easy (kids tetris), and pieces longer than 4 make the game too difficult and random, so the seven unique tetrominos are the ideal pieces to use for a falling block game.
4) the field must have an even width, to prevent a series of squares from ending the game, while it needs to be not a multiple of 4 to make S and Z difficult to handle.  so 4 and 8 are right out, and 6 doesn't leave much room to work with. hence the 10/20 field.

Within these simple constraints, there is room for a lot of expression. i think everyone here agrees that TGM1 and GB Tetris are very different games.

Another issue is the "Borg clause" in the tetris guideline, which state that every tetris variation used in a guideline game is owned by TTC. A PDF file was leaked, and i saw it. Cascade gravity? Owned by TTC since Tetris Worlds. Bombliss? Soarkliss? Owned by TTC.  TGM? OWNED BY TTC. (this is the real reason that TTC was so willing to license it).  Muutiplayer wit htetris items? Owned by TTC (HANGAME and Tetris Kiwimemichi) Scoring for t-spins? owned by TTC. Ghost piece? both forms owned by TTC.   initial spawn orientation? the good ones are owned by TTC, and the other three possibilities are useless. IHS/IR? Owned by TTC. Bag? owned by TTC since The New Tetris. weighted unequal probabiliies? owned by TTC since tetris worlds. history 4/6 rolls? owned by TTC since TGM. Memoryless? no, that's in a BPS tetris game too.  This borg clause lets them own forms of expression used in individual falling tetromino games, and because if this, it's nearly impossible ot make a game that has enough differing forms of expression from this entire catalog.

The stranglehold they have on the falling block genre is anticompetitive, because of the essential rules that they have managed to protect under trade dress.

NO FALLING BLOCK GAME THAT DOES NOT INFRINGE CAN COMPETE WITH THE SIMPLICITY AND PURITY OF TETRIS. And it is the only game in the entire history of the world which contains these stringent protections.  Match 3 is clones left and right, and everyone gets away with it. Puyo puyo gets cloned, and it's not taken down. Board games are cloned left and right. Fighting games are clones left and right. Abstract stratgyy games are cloned left an right. but you touch tetris....

[qwerty098765]

Other puzzle games I enjoy:

Puzzles and dragons,
Sokoban games,
Is sudoku a puzzle game?
Alchemy (http://www.popcap.com/games/alchemy/online)
Entanglement (http://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/)
'Toki Toki Boom' (yahoo) or 'Swordfighting' (Yohoho pirates) [What is it called anyway?]

Does FF tactics count? xDD
(Ah wait that's strategy...) I guess not.

[bigwig]

Hey! I still like Klax!

I used to play a lot of Zuma. The game and Revenge were great, but the "challenge" mode on them were non-starters and playing through the entire game for score and time was a bit much.

I used to play a lot of Zuma Blitz, but, to condense year's worth of changes, the game went from "play 3-4 games to get enough points to buy the boosters for a competitive high score run" to "play 20+ games for enough points to buy boosters for a high score run + hunt people's facebook walls for the random powerup you needed but couldn't buy" basically making the game completley inconvenient to play.

[Sisu]

RHDE: Furniture Fight is an indie game by tepples for Nintendo Entertainment System featuring polyominoes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeeRViqWafU#t=104

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Build your house out of wall templates, buy furniture, and then break into your opponent's house across the road to steal furniture. Keep your house the better looking of the two to win.[/quote] Download (ROM and source code): https://pineight.com/nes/#rhde or play now in JSNES Arcade

[zaphod77]

Oh, a Rampart clone.

seems well programmed, and has some interesting ideas.

[EagleLover58]

Gordian's knot, the rubik's cube all modes, puyo puyo, king of math, sudoku, triva crack, ken ken,and math blaster.