The (for now) final version of my game for the 2023 edition of the GMTK Game Jam, Nextris (AKA Tetris: You're Next). This is all I could achieve as an inexperienced solo dev in these 48 hours; it's not much, but I gave it my all, and I did achieve my goal of submitting something functional, so that's nice (even if it isn't nearly the final product I had hoped for).

Game info & controls
In normal Tetris, the computer supplies you with a piece and you get to decide where it ends up; in this game, these roles are reversed. Essentially, you play as the "Next" box and feed tiles to the computer, which performs a series of predetermined inputs as the  "player".

Controls: use your mouse to drag a piece from one of the choice boxes on the right onto the "Next" box. It will automatically be sent to the board once the timer runs out, but you can send it right away by pressing the "Send" button. The computer will then perform the inputs indicated on the left; when hovering over a piece, you also get a preview of where it would end up given these inputs. (Also, since the game is mouse-only, it technically works on mobile too. Hooray for Unity handling that automatically!)

Your goal is to rack up a high score. You get a game over if the pieces reach the top of the board or you don't supply the next piece before the timer runs out.

Known bugs/issues

  • The Exit and Back to Menu buttons crash the game (oops)
  • The UI breaks if the game is played at any resolution other than 960x600 (which should be the default size of the embed, but apparently some browsers don't follow that)
  • Pieces end up on the left of the screen much more often than the right (which makes it almost impossible to clear lines)

Future development
The game is very rough right now, and I wasn't able to fix all the bugs in the powerup system I had planned, so it didn't end up in the final version - that makes the current version quite boring to play, I know. Still, I think the idea has more potential than I was able to show here, so I do plan on making a post-jam version (without the time pressure of the Jam - coding  for the better part of the last 48 hours has really taken a toll on me). Feel free to leave suggestions for this updated version in the comments, as well as bug reports in the current version, or any kind of feedback really (but keep it civil!).

Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following fine folks:

And, of course, my friends for playtesting the game and supporting me throughout - special thanks to Loek for helping me brainstorm design ideas.

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