Orbitris by BOOtak
Version of Tetris with some SPIN to it.

Controls
- A/D (Left/Right arrows): Rotate piece
- W (Up arrow): Accelerate
- S (Down arrow): Decelerate
How to play
Place tetraminos just like in normal Tetris. Any row or column will disappear, if you fill it up to the GREY square. Fun thing is that sometimes you can score more than 4 lines at once!
If any block sticks out of RED square bounds, it's a game over!
Tips & Tricks
Gameplay might seem hard for someone due to counter-intuitivety of the orbital mechanics. Using this simple trick, you can aim your pieces precisely! (I wanted to add this help into the game, but ran out of time):
1) Select the position where you want to put your next piece, and ACCELERATE to raise your orbit above this position

2) When your piece is above the desired position, DECELERATE:

3) Aaaaand, it's done!

Changelog
- 10.10.2021:
- Fix fullscreen
- Add linux build
Ratings
| Overall | 89th | 3.878⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 155th | 3.674⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 5th | 4.391⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 356th | 3.337⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 256th | 3.467⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 329th | 2.441⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 289th | 3.192⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 49🗳️ | 66🗨️ |
@refrax295 Thank you! I hope "Tips & Tricks" section was helpful.
@fractale Thank you for playing! Oh man. Every LD I am determined to compose some music or get some help with it, but each time I end up producing silent entry :) Oh well, I'll try next time
Would've liked some sound as well. But still I'd love to see it more polished and intuitive, especially in order for it to get a broader appeal (I, too, am an impatient person lol)
@vectrex28 thank you for playing! I wish I had more time to think of some ways of making this more intuitive and "casual" probably. This is a thing with all orbital mechanics games I saw on LD so far: they're fun as a novelty, but usually hard to play, and the only way to improve UX is to ditch the orbital mechanics :)
I had fun playing, great job!
@mrbell270 Huh, oh, your version of the pun is better, can I borrow it for the header? :D Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed this!
@laurenceogden Thanks! I'm glad you found my tips helpful. Yeah, first time I tried to play my own game, I had a feeling that something is wrong. After some getting used to it, I found this concept okay-ish, but yeah, still far from the original addictive Tetris. I was trying to think of ways to improve gameplay, but found none.
@freeworld Thank you! Yeah, sliding was one of the ways to make this game easier. Sometimes it is counter-intuitive, but overall I think it makes more good than bad.
**Note** Fullscreen mode didn't work and using the arrow keys just moves the window, so I recommend using wasdf
I'm not sure if this is the type of game that you were trying to make, but I could see having a limited amount of fuel to do minor course corrections when attempting to place a piece helpful. In any case, nice work!
@strega Thank you! I think I've ALMOST mastered it during these 3 days :) I can aim pieces pretty good, but still can't strike more than 4 lines at once (which is theoretically possible). Yeah, reversing the direction could be helpful, thank you for the idea
@mrnannings thanks for checking this out!
@a-bond Yeah, this would allow to create solar system out of tetraminos, and perform some sick gravity assists :D
@javasaurus thanks! Yep, fullscreen is broken, that's my first time using emscripten + raylib, I'll figure out how to fix this next time. Yeah, I had to add WASD to usual arrows because of the issues with scrolling.
@kalevrk Thank you! Yeah, I was thinking on the combo of limited fuel and non-circular orbits to make game cycle faster. Maybe I should experiment with it for the post-compo version. Thanks!
My only complaint isn't really for the game itself. The window is just really tiny and can't be resized.
I like the artstyle and the whole idea.
It was fun trying to align the pieces properly.
Although not humorous, It is somwhat moody and atmosphereic.
The game was a little hard to play though.
The HTML5 version dosen't want to go fullscreen, It only goes to the top left corner.
Overall, great game. -WitekWitek
I have seen lot's of "Tetris" Clone/inspiration/... in my life (and I just made a sort of one for the LD49 ...) but yours is really original and different from all the others. Well done !
On the other hand, very hard to play... :-)
I was a bit sad that fullscreen did not work properly, it would have been so much better as the current view felt a bit too small. And of course a bigger view would help a bit for the times when I managed to lose the pieces without really understanding how I did it :smile:
Once you *get it* it becomes a fun sort of meditation, unlike the chaos of original tetris.
For anyone confused at the basic strategy, one thing to note is your actions affect the opposite side of the orbit.
If the orbit were a clock, what you do at 3 o'clock affects the orbit near 9 o'clock, and what you do at 12 affects the orbit near 6.
This may be an over-simplification but it helped me.
In other words: if you accelerate while on the top of the orbit (12 o'clock), the bottom (6 o'clock) of the orbit will enlarge.
Or if you decelerate while on the right side of the orbit, the left side will shrink.
For those still lost, the basic strategy is:
Accelerate making your orbit radius really large, and you are moving so slowly that...
You can quickly decelerate until your orbit changes from ellipse to a line seeking the center of the blocks.
I think the unstable orbits are a great take on the theme!
@strega @bootak you can reverse the orbit by accelerating to a huge orbit, then decelerating a bunch. Once you do reverse orbit, your controls reverse. Pressing S accelerates and W decelerates.
@mchs-productions Thank you for the kind words! Well, that was challenging, but with some handy Vector2-related functions in raylib I was able to program the core logic pretty fast.
@helicule thank you for playing! I am happy that you liked it!
@witekwitek Thanks! As I can't really create any art, my solo games are usually look pretty simple. I'm happy that you find these visuals somewhat likeable :) Yeah, I was thinking on some ways to simplify the gameplay, but had no time to implement anything. As for fullscreen mode, I've made an update with properly working fullscreen, you can check this out.
@thegamerasd Thank you!
@chaosbrick Thanks for playing! I wrote pretty complicated logic to slide pieces after you've placed them. And while this makes gameplay somewhat easies, it is still pretty far on the hard side.
@richnou Thank you for appreciating my take on Tetris :) I wish it would simpler, but 48h are 48h :)
@future-labs-unlimited Yeah, clearing a line is great :) Thank you for playing!
@zimny11 Thank you! Yeah, time limit, and lack of experience in writing music / making SFX. All my solo entries are silent, and every LD I make a promise that I'll do something about it, but here we are, another LD, another silent game :)
@sethjmoore Thank you! I've seen 4d tetris, softbody Tetris, and many more - surprized no one made orbital Tetris before, AFAIK :)
@domantas Thank you for playing, I'm really happy you found this concept interesting! I'm sad that you were sad, so I fixed fullscreen mode today :) You can try again if you like :) As for losing pieces, I have some code that checks whether your piece is too far from the center - and, if it is - returns it back to the default orbit. However, it is possible to accelerate your piece in such a way that it is already out of view, but still has not flown far enough. In that case - yeah, you can totally lose your piece. I guess I should've check whether a piece is out of view for a certain amount of time instead.
@michael-feldman wow, that's an impressive score, congrats! I'm happy that you liked it and played for some time! Yeah, you got everyghing right about the mechanics :)
I would love a bit more feedback in the game, some stronger visual feedback for clearing a block, landing, etc..
Overall fun game, well done!