Cyber Tetris: rules, controls and strategy

Rules

• Place falling pieces without overlapping locked cells or the walls.
• A completely filled row clears.
• The run ends when a new piece cannot enter the board.
• Hold swaps the active piece with the stored piece and is limited until the next lock.
• Level increases as lines are cleared and multiplies line-clear points.

Keyboard, pointer and touch controls

Arrow Left and Right move, Arrow Down soft-drops, Arrow Up rotates, and Space hard-drops. Use the labeled on-screen controls on touch devices. Hold and Pause have separate buttons.

Scoring and saving

Clearing one, two, three, or four rows uses increasing base values multiplied by the current level. A four-line clear is worth substantially more than four isolated singles. The best score synchronizes for signed-in players.

Scores from browser games are bounded and synchronized by the backend, but local game outcomes are client-authoritative unless this guide explicitly identifies server-owned match evidence.

Beginner guidance

• Keep the stack mostly flat and preserve multiple placement options.
• Use the next preview before moving the current piece.
• Leave a clean vertical well only when preparing for the long I piece.
• Soft-drop while learning; hard-drop only after confirming position.

Advanced strategy

• Use the seven-bag knowledge to estimate which pieces remain.
• Build surfaces that accept both S/Z and J/L pieces.
• Use Hold to escape a bad immediate fit, not as permanent storage.
• At high levels, position horizontally before the piece reaches the stack.

Common mistakes

• Creating covered holes that no later piece can fill.
• Building one side far higher than the other.
• Hard-dropping from the spawn area without checking the ghost position.
• Holding repeatedly and forgetting it is locked until placement.

Accessibility notes

Keyboard and large touch controls provide equivalent actions, previews are labeled, and score/level/lines are text. Reduced-motion settings limit decorative effects but retain necessary falling movement.

Troubleshooting

• If keys scroll the page, focus the game and retry.
• If Hold is disabled, lock the current piece before using it again.
• Lower the frame cap if animation is uneven on battery-saving devices.
• If the board pauses after tab switching, use Resume; hidden-tab work is intentionally suspended.