Tetris Battle (Facebook)

Tetris Battle is a Flash based browser Tetris game available on Facebook. It's the successor of Tetris Friends, but it puts more focus on asynchronous gameplay (fake multiplayer). The Facebook integration offers an easy way to challenge Facebook friends or see who is online. Tetris Battle uses a KO system to determine the winner after 2 minutes and introduced bombs in garbage lines. The game is free to play, but it persuades players to spend real money by limiting playtime and offering tunings, skins and one-use game items. Despite not being very popular among the Tetris community, it got over one million daily users at its culmination.

Tetris Cash
Tetris Cash is the currency in Tetris Battle. Tetris Cash is the only way to buy certain things like energy packs, day tickets, permanent skins (decors) and armors. It can also be used to buy tuning or unlock modes. There're no proper ways to earn Tetris Cash besides spending real money. 

Tetris Coins
Tetris Coins is some kind of smaller currency. You may want to compare it to Cents if you conider Tetris Cash as Euros or Dollars. Tetris Coins can be used to buy tunings, boosts and temporary skins (decors). You'll earn some Tetris Coins for each game you play. You may also win some in Daily Lottery. 

Energy
Energy is Tetris Battle's way to limit playtime. The maximum amount that the player can have is 30. Each game you play costs 5 energy. If you run out of energy, you have to use an energy pack or watch an advertisement. 1 Energy is refilled every 5 minutes (25 minutes per game). If you don't want to wait so long you'll have to use one of these: 


 * small energy pack: refills 5 energy
 * medium energy pack: refills 10 energy
 * large enery pack: refills 20 energy
 * full energy pack: fully restores your energy
 * collect and use all 7 pieces: fully restores your energy
 * 1 day ticket: playtime is unlimited for one day
 * 7 day ticket: playtime is unlimited for a week

You can get small energy packs in Daily Lottery or by playing 6 consecutive games in Battle 2P. A capsule can also contain energy packs and tickets. Otherwise you have to spend Tetris Cash.

Note: Prior to March 2013, your XP Level was added to your maximum energy. At level 71 you had 100 energy. You lost only 2 energy when playing against Facebook friends.

XP Level
More or less, XP Level says how long you've played Tetris Battle. You earn experience (XP) by playing games. You'll gain 1 level when you've reached enough XP. Each time you level up, your energy will be refilled and you get some Tetris Coins (was 1 Tetris Cash prior to March 2013). Besides that, experience is pretty useless. You have to reach a certain level before you can unlock certain modes or use boosts (to not confuse new players). 

Boosts
The manual refers to them as "Game Items". In certain modes (Battle 2P, Battle 6P) they can be used to gain an advantage over your opponents. You must activate them before you start a game. Some people may consider their use as cheating. There are 3 type of boosts: 


 * Shield: blocks up to 15 garbage lines at the begin of each game
 * Final Rush: send up to 15 extra lines in the last 30 seconds
 * Twin Bomb: each garbage line has 2 bombs instead of 1

There might be some special days where the effect of these boosts is doubled.

Daily Lottery



 * Tetris Coins
 * boost
 * one of the 7 piece shapes (I, J, L, O, S, T, or Z)
 * a small energy pack
 * a capsule spin

Tuning
 You can play faster using Tunings. However, you have to purchase these upgrades first with Tetris Coins or Tetris Cash. There are 4 types of tunings:


 * left/right speed (DAS & ARR)
 * line clear speed
 * soft drop speed
 * next piece queue (1 to 5 Previews)

The fastest DAS and ARR settings are comparable to those in Tetris Friends. Soft drop and line clears are faster than in Tetris Friends.

Skins (Decors)
Skins determine how your playfield looks like. You have to purchase a skin before you can use it. Skins bought with Tetris Coins can just be used for a week. There are 3 different types of skins: Mino skins, Ghost skins and bomb skins. Some skins are seasonal (Valentine, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Xmas). 

Options
The options menu allows you to change controls (keys) and to turn bombs, handicap and Ghost piece on/off. Handicap only affects games against friends. 

Weekly Tournament
 This feature was removed around March/April 2013. The goal was to get as many points as possible within 1 week. Each day you could play 3 Battle 2P games that didn't consume any energy. If you wanted to play more games, then you had to collect Tokens. Your opponents were assigned to you according to your points. The more points you had, the harder the opponent. You got more points for being on a winning streak. At the end of the week you received a reward according to how well you performed. The best 100 players got some Tetris Cash or permanent skins.

Asynchronous gameplay
Whenever you don't play Arena, against a Facebook friend or a challenger (recommended opponent), you'll encounter replays. In this case, an earlier played game will be used to simulate multiplayer experience. Your opponent needn't even be online. It's an easy way to find opponents of your skill level, plus you needn't wait for your opponents and you can pause whenever you want. On the other hand, you have no option to chat and your opponent can't react to your moves. Also note that asynchronous gameplay doesn't work with garbage lines that have holes.

Modes
There are 6 modes in total, namely : Marathon, Sprint, Sprint 4P, Battle 2P, Battle 6P and Arena.

Marathon
Complete the 15 levels with a score as high as possible. The higher the level, the higher the gravity and the shorter the lock delay. You have to clear 5 lines for the levels 1 to 5, 10 lines for the levels 6 to 10 and 15 lines for the levels 11 to 15. You get points for clearing lines and doing T-Spins. The corresponding points can be found to the right side. These points are multiplied with your current level. You also get 2 points for each row you hard drop a piece and 1 point for each row you soft srop a piece. Perfect clears are not rewarded. Back-to-Back increases the points of Tetrises and T-Spin line clears by 50 %.

The best strategy for the early levels are 4-wide Combos, ZT Stacking and Infinite T-Spin Triple setup. To compare these, assume we clear 18 lines on level 1 and have already started the Back-to-Back chain. Let's also neglect the drop points. In this case a 4-wide 18 combo yields 9,450 points, Infinite TST 10,800 points and idealized ZT Stacking (5 TSDs per Tetris) 9,257 points. From these numbers, Infinite TST is the most effective. However, ZT Stacking will beat Infinite TST in practice. It's more stable and a very skilled player can pull it through until the end. 

Sprint


Versus Modes
There are three types of Versus Modes: Battle 2P, Battle 6P, Arena. They have in common that they all use a KO System to determine the winner of each game. A Knock Out appears when the next piece collides with the stack when it spawns. In this case the opponent who send the last garbage line to this player will score the KO. The player who scores the most KOs will become the winner. More explicitely at the end of each game players will be sorted by: 


 * number of KOs
 * number of sent garbage lines (if equal number of KOs)
 * the height of the stack (if equal number of KOs and sent lines)

Each round takes 2 minutes. Rounds can end prematurely, if a player scores 5 KOs (Battle 2P) or 10 KOs (Arena) or all opponents are knocked out 5 times. All 3 versus modes have ranks. When playing against lower ranked opponents in Battle 2P and Battle 6P, concrete lines are added to your field to balance the game. There's no way to clear those lines. This handicap can be turned off when playing against friends. 

Battle 2P


Arena


Garbage
Tetris Battle uses Garbage Countering but not Garbage Blocking. So whenever there are incoming lines, these lines are canceled before sending garbage. After you drop a piece, the remaining lines are entered no matter if you've cleared a line or not.

All 3 versus modes (Battle 2P, Battle 6P and Arena) use the same line sent table. The exact numbers for each attack can be found on the right side. Combos are pretty strong. Even small combos send a lot of lines. Back-to-Back Tetrises and T-Spins send 50 % more lines than usual. This makes T Spin Triples more powerful than in most other games. The Garbage lines for a Perfect clear stack with those for Combos and Line clears. Thus starting a game with a Perfect clear will usually send 13 lines.

However, there are 3 types of garabage depending on the mode you play and on the bombs option you use There are 3 different types of garbage.

Bombs
This is the default garbage type in Battle 2P and Battle 6P. In contrast to most other multiplayer games, there's a bomb (or 2 if playing with Twin Bomb boost) instead of a hole in each garbage line. If a piece was dropped on a bomb, this bomb exlodes and the corresponding garbage line is cleared. The position of the bombs (column) will switch after every 2 lines or after each attack. Combos and lineclears are considered seperate attacks. If 2 bombs are located above each other, then both both bombs will detonate when dropping a piece on the upper bomb. This will sent an additional line which is another seperate attack For example, if you drop a piece on a bomb pair and clear a Double at the same, then you send 2 lines of messy garbage. Same is true if your Double increases the combo counter to 1 (2 consecutive line clears, second one is a Double). Detonating a bomb without clearing a normal line will maintain the Back-to-Back chain (next Tetris or T-Spin will have B2B bonus).

The garbage of T-Spin Doubles and Tetrises is very clean (always 2 bombs above each other). It can be cleared easily by a Downstack combo which sends very messy garbage itself. So, going for Back-to-Back attacks may backfire, if you don't manage to top out your opponent. This is also why ZT stacking is a bad idea when playing with bombs.

Solid Garbage
When setting the Bombs option to "Off", this garbage type will be used in Battle 2P and Battle 6P. Solid garbage lines have no hole or bomb inside them. They can only be cleared by sending garbage lines yourself. If you have solid garbage lines in your field, then you must clear them first before you send garbage to your opponent. So sending lines over to your opponent offers some protection from his/her attacks at the same time. <BR clear="left">

Playing with Solid Garbage is more like Ultra than real Multiplayer. There's no real interaction with garbage. ZT stacking and 4-wide combos seems to be the best strategies.

Normal Garbage
This garbage type will be used in Arena. Each garbage line has exactly 1 hole. There seems to be a 90 % chance that the hole will switch after every attack. Combos and lineclears are considered seperate attacks. This is also true for the Back-to-Back bonus. For example if you send a B2B Tetris, then your opponent will receive 6 lines (4+2) of garbage, whereas the garbage column will most likely switch one time. The line clear garbage will be canceled (countered) first and is inserted above that of combos and Back-to-Back.

Doing Back-to-Back attacks while downstacking is a good strategy for this type of garbage. Maintaining the Back-to-Back chain is more important than in Tetris Friends. <BR clear="left">

Maps
All 3 versus modes can be played with Maps. This means that you start the game with a predefined shape instead of an empty field. There are 12 maps in total. Some of them are good for Combos, some are good for T-Spins, some are just mean.

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Ranks
Sprint 4P, Battle 2P, Battle 6P and Arena have ranks that illustrate your skill in those modes. Your rank in one game mode does not affect your rank in the other modes. Initially, there were 25 ranks, then it was increased to 50, later to 100, 105 and then 110. You'll need to collect Stars to rank up. Stars are earned by winning games. After the rank number changes (rank up/down), you'll start at 2 Stars. You rank down when reaching a negative number of Stars, but if you are rank 1, this does not occur, as players can't go down to rank 0. You rank up when reaching 5 Stars, respectively 50 Stars from rank 101 to 110. Players with rank 110 and 50 Stars will be called the "God of Tetris". There is no benefit from possessing a high rank besides personal pride. You earn XP faster on higher ranks, but this doesn't matter anymore, since XP Level doesn't affect your maximum energy.

The Sprint 4P, Battle 2P and Battle 6P modes have leaderboards. Players are sorted by ranks and number of wins. There's a seperate leaderboard that just shows your friends.

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