Jstris

As of a few weeks ago, Tetris Friends has closed. The site is no longer in working order and all player data has been wiped. Meaning my sub-one-minute Sprint score, my level 17 rank in 2P, and my 70,000 plus score on Marathon is all gone. It is quite a shame and I do miss the website, seeing as it was what opened the world of Tetris to me.  

After much searching, I believe I’ve found the perfect replacement. The website in question is called Jstris, and checks off all the boxes for the ideal replacement. In fact, it has all the game modes Tetris Friends had except for 2P and Marathon. However, this isn’t a problem as Tetris.com fills in for Marathon and Jstris has an even better version of 2P. 

Instead of playing against a single bot, you now play against real players. The best part is that you can control how many people you play against by selecting a specific room. In a way, it’s a scaled up version of Tetris Friends Arena game mode. The best description I can come up with to describe it is Tetris 99 on the computer. The only downside I can say about it is that it’s really hard. People on Jstris are actually good and you need some level of skill to even get top 50 in a room of a hundred players. If you are completely new to Tetris, you will top out ridiculously quick. These people know no mercy. Even I need to bring my A-game to win a round.    

As for Sprint, Ultra, and Survival. Jstris adds in a whole lot more customization and scales up the difficulty a lot. The only game mode that is different from Tetris Friends is Survival. In Tetris Friends, you cleared lines until you reached level 20, at which point the pieces will periodically turn invisible. It may seem hard to top invisible pieces, but somehow Jstris manages to do it. In Jestris, there are no levels. Instead, every second a new line of garbage appears and you need to survive long enough not to top out. It may sound easier but it is not. Setting up a Tetris is almost impossible. The only viable strategy I’ve been able to come up with is just clearing every line one by one, using the best possible pieces. For Sprint and Ultra, instead of clearing a set 40 lines, you can now choose how many lines you want to clear. There is the option of clearing 20, 40, 100, or even a 1000 lines! So far I’ve only stuck to the conventional 40 for both game modes. I couldn’t even imagine clearing a 1000 lines at my fastest pace without my wrists suffering. 

Aside from just game mode customization, you can also customize your DAS of all things. Like I’ve stated before in a previous blog, DAS is shorthand for delay auto shift. Meaning if you hold down a key, the piece moves in that direction until you lift your finger. I believe in classic Tetris the first move takes around six frames and the following ones take around two. For this reason, moving pieces to the far sides of the board becomes impossible after reaching a certain height and level (Death Screen). However, in Jstris you can customize how fast these pieces can move! The only downside I can see to using this feature is the lack of control one will have. For example, a single touch could send a piece to the far left, even if you meant to only move it just a little. I believe it is because of this feature, playing against other players is really hard. If one can master their own ultra-fast DAS settings, they could rival or even surpass the number of lines a Hyper Tapper could send. 

In the end, Jstris is the best possible replacement I could’ve found for Tetris Friends. It is sad Tetris Friends is gone, but I think Jstris will be just as fun. Unlike Tetris Friends, the people on this website are really good. The extra customization is just icing on the cake. The only thing that could make this website better is to make it less bland. In terms of UI, it’s really boring and you can only change the look of Tetraminos. If they just added some more color and a Marathon game mode, Jstris would be perfect.