Block Drop

About Block Drop

Block Drop is a falling-blocks puzzle. Pieces made of four squares drop into a well ten cells wide; slide and turn them so they fit together, and every row you fill completely disappears. Leave gaps and the stack climbs, and once there is no room for the next piece the game is over.

Also called: falling blocks game, block stacking, line clear puzzle.

How to play Block Drop

1. Press Play (or Enter). A piece appears at the top of the well and starts to fall.
2. Move it with ← and →. Hold a direction and, after a short delay, the piece slides until you let go or it hits something.
3. Turn it clockwise with ↑ or X, counter-clockwise with Z or Ctrl, or a half turn with A.
4. Hold ↓ to drop faster, or press Space to drop the piece straight down and lock it. The outline at the bottom shows exactly where it will land.
5. Press C or Shift to put the piece in the Hold box and take it out again later. The Next panel shows the five pieces coming up.
6. Fill a whole row from wall to wall to clear it. Esc or P pauses.
7. On a phone, use the buttons under the well, or play on the well itself: tap to turn, drag sideways to move one cell at a time, drag down to drop slowly, flick down to drop instantly and flick up to hold.

Rules

• There are seven pieces, one for every way of joining four squares edge to edge. They come in shuffled bags of seven, so you always see every piece once in each group of seven, and you never wait more than twelve pieces for a particular one.
• A piece that touches the stack or the floor locks after half a second. Moving or turning it restarts that timer up to 15 times; after that it locks when the timer runs out. Dropping lower than it has been before gives you all 15 again.
• When a turn is blocked, the piece tries a few nearby spots (a wall kick), so you can turn next to a wall, off the floor, or into a notch in the stack.
• Hold can be used once per piece. It becomes available again after the next piece locks.
• Scoring in Marathon: a Single is worth 100 points, a Double 300, a Triple 500 and a Quad (four lines at once) 800, all multiplied by your level. A Quad straight after another Quad scores half as much again. Clearing lines with consecutive pieces builds a combo worth 50 × combo × level. Soft drop scores 1 point per cell and hard drop 2 per cell.
• You start at level 1 and go up a level every 10 lines. Each level the pieces fall faster, until around level 19 they reach the bottom instantly.
• The game ends when a new piece has no room to appear, or a piece locks completely above the top of the well.

Block Drop tips and strategy

• Keep the stack flat. A level surface fits every piece; tall towers and deep holes fit only one or two.
• Leave one column open, usually at the edge, and stack everything else up to four rows high. Then drop the long piece into the gap for a Quad: it is worth far more than four Singles.
• Use hold. Park the long piece until your well is ready for it, or swap out a piece that doesn't fit anywhere right now.
• Look at the Next panel, not just the falling piece. Plan where the next two or three will go before you place this one.
• Avoid covering holes. A single square left underneath the stack costs you a line until you dig down to it.
• Learn to use hard drop. Once a piece is lined up, Space saves time and scores more, which matters a lot in Sprint and at high levels.
• Tune the handling. If pieces slide too early when you only meant to move one cell, raise the auto-shift delay in settings; if they feel sluggish, lower it or the repeat rate.