Develop a Tetris clone in 2 hours. My challenge to all Vibe Coders 🎮

Many people know Tetris as a cult game from the 80s. But in the developer community, it is regarded as a kind of "Hello World" of game development.

Why?

• The rules are simple but complete.
• You have to implement basic mechanics: Playing field, collisions, rotation, points, levels.
• It's small enough that you can complete it in an evening - but big enough that you end up with a "real" game in your hands...

My experience: Tetris in 2 hours, without any AI

A few years ago, I set myself the challenge: Can I rebuild Tetris from scratch?
The answer: Yes - and in just two hours.

I developed my clone back then in QB45 (QuickBASIC 4.5), completely manually without AI or frameworks. The result is a fully functional Tetris with all the basics:

• Falling stones
• rotation
• Delete lines
• Score and Game Over

And the best thing about it: The moment when the first Tetromino "collides" with the edge and the game logic takes effect - priceless!

The challenge to you 🚀

Now it's your turn, dear Vibe Coders:

👉 Build your own Tetris clone - in a maximum of 2 hours. It doesn't matter whether you use QuickBASIC, Python, JavaScript or Unity. The important thing is: It has to be playable!

Share your result, your screenshots or the source code. I am curious,

• how you solve the game logic,
• which features you absolutely have to include (e.g. next piece, high scores, hard drop),
• and whether you are faster than I was back then.

Pseudocode to get started 🧩

So that nobody starts from scratch, here is a small pseudocode snippet that shows the basic idea:

initialize board[10][20] = empty choose random tetromino as currentPiece loop as long as game is running: input = read_keyboard() if input = LEFT: currentPiece.x -= 1 if input = RIGHT: currentPiece.x += 1 if input = ROTATE: rotate currentPiece if input = DROP: currentPiece.y += 1 if collision(currentPiece, board): currentPiece.y -= 1 fix currentPiece in the board remove full lines currentPiece = random new tetromino draw board + currentPiece wait (tick depending on level)

With exactly this basic framework, you can very quickly create an executable game.

In a hurry

Programming Tetris is not rocket science - but that's exactly what makes it so appealing.

It's an ideal introduction to the world of game development and a perfect coding challenge to put your skills to the test.

This is how you take part:

Which of you can code Tetris in 2 hours? 💻🎮

💡 Connect with me on LinkedIn - you can find my profile in the box below by clicking on my name.

Send me your GitHub links and screenshots via PN. I look forward to your results! 🚀