Bastard Tetris Hates You

Press the Buttons has a post up about a Linux version of Tetris called Bastard Tetris. The name is well founded, as the game evaluates what shape you need the least and sends that as your next piece. From the Bastet site: "Have you ever thought Tetris(R) was evil because it wouldn't send you that straight "I" brick you needed in order to clear four rows at the same time? Well Tetris(R) probably isn't evil, but Bastet certainly is. >:-) Bastet stands for "bastard tetris", and is a simple ncurses-based Tetris(R) clone for Linux. Unlike normal Tetris(R), however, Bastet does not choose your next brick at random. Instead, Bastet uses a special algorithm designed to choose the worst brick possible. As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!" Sounds like the sailing puzzle in Puzzle Pirates.

Hmm.

[Pikace]

Heheh. At least it doesn't give us those weird blocks with more than 4 units like so many of the tetris remakes.

Hmmm....sounds evil but is it?

[Pinkoir]

It sure sounds evil but only in the "Kill as many babies as you can before the cops get you" kind of way. True evil is more subtle. I think the best test for evilness in tetris clones is to see how cruel the clone can be while still making the player think it is not really that bad. After all, people will quit in frustration if the game is too obvious about its malevolence. You want to string them along, slowly ramping up their frustration, giving them the hint of success every once and a while only to tear their souls slowly from their block-addled minds with a perfectly times sequence of S-bricks.

You would test true tetris evilness in an online competition between the various clones. The evilest would be the one which generated the best aggregate of low average scores and high number of games played. That would signify the tetris which was best able to trick players into thinking it wasn't evil.

Please note that I don't advocate actually undtertaking such a foul endevour. The world has enough evil in it already.

-Pinkoir

'Evil'? Surely not, how about 'fatalistic humor'?

[waterbear]

Any game where the goal is to shuffle around parts desperately until you fail in the end, and where 'winning' is just a matter of how long you survived, has a whiff of evil about it.

It's not at all ironic that Tetris originates from someone who grew up under Soviet rule.

As a game of inevitable failure, tetris struck me as inspired by a rather dark fatalistic humor -- but surely 'evil' is too strong? :) Anyway this aspect of Russian humor was seemingly around long before the Soviets (think Chekhov)!

-wb-

Re:hmm

[CoffeeJedi]

That's because the arcade companies wanted you to keep slugging in quarters to get that high score. Nintendo wanted you to complete the game, so you would want to run out and buy another one.