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There are four game modes in Tetris®. 

Tetris Primetime is a massively multiplayer daily game of Tetris where you can win money, just by playing! Tetris Primetime happens at 9pm every night, give or take a bit depending on where you are. There’ll always be a countdown in game to tell you when the next Primetime will be, but we recommend turning on your notifications so you don’t miss your chance to win!

Tetris Royale is a battle royale Tetris game. Each match of Royale has 100 players squaring off to see who can be the last one standing! It’s a great way to keep sharp in between Primetimes.

Tetris Together is just like Tetris Royale… only YOU control who you play with! Invite your family and friends to a game and you’ll have the option to voice chat while you play Tetris!

Solo Marathon mode is for those times when you want to play Tetris on your own. It’s the iconic Tetris you know and love, in your pocket!

Playing Tetris using a touch screen is easy to do – but we thought we’d write everything down to save you from having to experiment around on your own.

Swiping the screen left or right will move your Tetrimino to the left or right. Tapping the screen rotates it. Tapping the right side rotates your Tetrimino clockwise. Tapping the left side rotates your Tetrimino counterclockwise.

If you’re trying to speed things up a bit, you can make your Tetriminos fall faster with Hard Drops and Soft Drops.

To Hard Drop, swipe down on the screen. This immediately locks your Tetrimino in place. 

To Soft Drop, hold your finger on the screen and drag down. When you Soft Drop, you can still move your Tetrimino on contact with a surface before Lock Down occurs.

When you swipe up, you’ll put whatever Tetrimino is falling into your Hold Queue. If there’s already a Tetrimino there, it’ll pop into your Matrix.

If you’re not super keen on swiping, there is another option available for you in the settings menu: on screen controls. Now available in right and left hand variations!

Tetris Primetime happens once a day at 9pm for most players in a region. Depending on what time zone you are in, Primetime may be earlier or later for you, but it will be the same time every day.  We recommend turning on your notifications so that you don’t have to remember WHEN Primetime is, but there will always be a countdown to the next Primetime in-game if you forget to! If you don’t see a banner for Primetime in your app, nothing’s wrong with your game – it simply means you’re in a territory where we are not running cash prizes. 

Our current list of Primetime-eligible countries are: USA, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, South Africa, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. In certain parts of Canada and Australia you will not be able to play based on local laws. We will be adding more countries to Primetime over time.

Once you’re in Primetime, you’ll notice that the game is broken up into timed rounds. Every round, you’ve got a score goal you’re trying to hit before the timer runs out. If you hit that score goal AND you’ve still got time left, you enter Frenzy Time! Frenzy Time is a bonus mode where you score double points until the end of the round.

If you don’t hit the score goal, your game isn’t over, but you will get some Garbage added to the bottom of your Matrix – a couple of lines that’ll make the next round a little bit harder. Some Garbage you can clear, some Garbage you can’t – it changes up every night to keep things interesting.

Garbage or no, if you survive all the rounds you’ll be a Victor. Only Victors will be placed on the final leaderboard! That’s good – but even if you don’t make it to the final leaderboard, you can still win money! The better you play the more chances you have to win!

To win money from Tetris Primetime, you’ve got to be over 18 and playing in a territory where cash prizing is allowed. If you’re doing that, you’re halfway there!

There are lots of ways to win, even if you’re just getting started. There are three types of Prize Draws: surviving beyond a certain round, surviving to the end and being a Victor, or placing at or above a certain position on the leaderboards (e.g. Top 100 Scoring Victors). 

We’ll always announce what each evening’s Prize Draws will be before Primetime starts and how much money we’re going to give out. The better you play and the longer you survive, the more chances you’ll have to win! 

You probably already know how to score points in Tetris – clear lines. That’s true, but there’s a little more to it than that.

Everything you do in Tetris that earns you points has a baseline score – how much the move is worth – which gets multiplied by your current level. Basically, the faster the Tetrimino pieces are falling, the more points you’ll score, regardless of what mode you’re playing.

Without further ado, here are all the baseline scores for Tetris:

On top of that, you’ll also earn Back-To-Back bonuses if you do Tetris Line Clears or T-Spin Line Clears back-to-back, without clearing any other lines in between. The Back-To-Back bonus will give you an extra 50% of whatever you would have scored from that move in the first place. 

T-Spins are when instead of dropping a T-Tetrimino ONTO your build, you rotate a T-Tetrimino INTO your build. 

Mini T-Spins are the same thing, with more exposed corners. If you want a full T-Spin instead of a Mini T-Spin you’ve got to make sure every corner of that nubbin is covered up.

You know the number just below your Next Queue? That’s your Tetris Level. Take whatever the baseline score would be for a Line Clear (scroll up for all the ways you can score) and multiply it by that number. When that number goes up, the Tetriminos fall faster and you score more points because everything gets trickier! 

In Tetris Together, Royale, and Primetime your Tetris Level will rise on its own. In Solo Marathon mode, it’ll increase by one every ten lines you clear.

The score multiplier based on the Tetris Level does not apply to Primetime mode, where all players are always scoring the base score (or doubling base score if you’re in Frenzy Time).

Block Out happens when part of a newly generated Tetrimino is obstructed by an existing Tetrimino in the Buffer Zone above the Matrix. That’s probably all Greek to some of you, so let’s break it down a bit.

Block Out is game over. The Buffer Zone is a little secret area near the top of the screen where it looks like you should have Blocked Out but the game gives you a little wiggle room. The Matrix is the main play area. 

When you’ve got so many Tetriminos piled up that you can’t get any more in, then you Block Out.

Play enough Primetime and you’ll wind up coming across Garbage at some point. Garbage is when rows of Minos appear at the bottom of your Matrix. It’ll show up at the end of a round if you haven’t hit your score goal. The closer you get to your score goal, the less Garbage you’ll get. Once you make it to Frenzy Time, you’re garbage free!

If you do get Garbage, there’s three types: Well Garbage, where the gaps in each row line up. Random Garbage, where the gaps in each row don’t line up at all, and Unclearable Garbage, where there’s no gaps in any rows. That’s the worst kind. We don’t recommend it.

Getting Garbage isn’t a game over, though – it’ll just make your next round a little harder!

Lock Down is the moment when your Tetrimino can’t be moved or rotated anymore.

But get this – Lock Down doesn’t happen right away UNLESS you do a Hard Drop. Otherwise, you’ve got a moment or two after your Tetrimino makes contact with the top of your build where you can still rotate it, slide it around, whatever you need to do.

When the Tetriminos are drifting down from above this might not matter a whole lot to you. But when the Tetriminos are falling fast? Every second counts – PARTICULARLY the ones before Lock Down happens.

The Super Rotation System is a method of rotating Tetriminos, even when they’re up against a wall or the floor of your build. 

You can use it to get an I-Tetrimino into a blocked well, squeeze a J-Tetrimino into a tiny gap, or pull off a T-Spin Triple Line Clear! If you’re ever stuck, keep rotating – the Super Rotation System may be the thing that gets you out of a sticky situation.

You can choose your Theme and your Avatar whenever you feel like a change of pace. To change your Theme, tap the paint bucket icon at the top of the Home Screen. To change your Avatar, tap your current Avatar (the little icon next to your Username) at the top of the Home Screen.

We’ll update Themes and Avatars regularly, so you can keep fine-tuning your Tetris style to be just the way you like it!