Scoring

Most games award points to the player for completing various tasks. The earliest games awarded points only for dropping tetrominoes, and some even gave a penalty for leaving piece preview turned on.

After Tetris for Game Boy, most games adopted a scoring system designed to reward difficult clears by giving points for more lines cleared at once. Some systems also encouraged starting at higher difficulty.

Original Nintendo scoring system
This score was used in Nintendo's versions of Tetris for NES, for Game Boy, and for Super NES.

For each piece, the game also awards the number of points equal to the number of grid spaces that the player has continuously soft dropped the piece. Unlike the points for lines, this does not increase per level.

The New Tetris
The New Tetris awards "lines": one for each line cleared, one extra line for clearing four lines with one I tetromino, and several lines for clearing parts of a 4x4 square. This does not increase as the game gets faster. Soft and firm drops do not give points; instead, they allow the player to place more tetrominoes (and clear more lines) in the three minute game.

Tetris Worlds
Each mode of Tetris Worlds has its own scoring system. As in The New Tetris, the unit of score in each mode is "lines"; 2-, 3-, and 4-line clears grant additional points in some modes.

Tetris Deluxe
Tetris Deluxe scoring system is similar to Tetris Worlds.

Tetris DS
Each mode of Tetris DS has its own scoring system. Most notably, the system used in Standard mode represents a fusion of the 1, 3, 5, 8 pattern used in several modes of Tetris Worlds with the section multiplier of the NES and Game Boy system.

Guideline scoring system
Most games released after Tetris DS share large part of scoring system. As a result, the Tetris Guideline specifies a scoring system.

As of 2006, this is the guideline scoring system.

Tetris Best
Tetris Best scoring gradually increases with time. Speed is time for piece to fall 1, in seconds. It starts with 1 and is multiplied by 0.99 for each piece placed.

Immobile algorithm is used for spins, and diagonally sliding to Immobile rules also counts.

Tetris Best 2

 * Single=1
 * Double=3
 * Triple=5
 * Spin=4+(spin line clear points)

Spin check is like in Tetris Best.

Tetris Perfect
Unlike Tetris Best, Tetris Perfect scoring is constant.

Immobile is used, like in Tetris Best.

Tetris Brick
In Tetris Brick, interest rate and score start at 0.

Score is constantly increased by score*interest rate. At 0.01 interest rate, 100 instantly becomes 101, then 102.01, and so on.

The exponential growth will eventually exceed 2^1024 (10^309) and display "Infinity" for your score. However, in practice it will be game over.

Each piece placed increases the interest rate by 0.0000001.

Points per line are determined by 3*sinh(2n), where n is number of lines cleared.

Single: 10.88 Double: 81.87 Triple: 605.14 Tetris: 4471.44

Don't be fooled by high score from getting a Tetris. Tetris is very hard to do in this game due to small playfield and unusability of place above top of playfield (spawn position overlaps ceiling, can't move, rotation kicks down).