Good ol' Tetris

Back when I was first becoming interested in game development a few years ago, I didn't know the first thing about making a game, even a simple one. I knew how to write code, but that was it. So after some searching around on the internet on "how to make a video game" it seemed the popular answer was to start off by making some sort of variant of either Tetris or Breakout. I was much more familiar with Tetris, having played the crap out of that game on the original GameBoy when I was a kid, so I went with that.


I learned just enough Windows programming to make it run on a PC, and wrote the entire thing in C++. The video below shows a quick demo of the final version.



What you don't see in the video is the variable grid size and additional block shapes I added. The initial launch window that appears when you run the game lets you select the size of the grid to play in, and lets you select what kind of block shapes to use. For instance, the standard grid size is 10x18, but on my current monitor I can have a grid size of up to 64x42 - pretty ridiculous. Playing with a huge grid area and up to 87 different block shapes is amuzing, but the classic version is truly the most fun.