Tetris Game

A Tetris clone that runs entirely in your terminal (curses), with a twist: you don't have to play it yourself. Flip on AI Auto-Play and watch a heuristic solver clear lines on its own, one simulated placement at a time.

Try it !

You can try it here (only works on laptop) : https://tetris-s5wj.onrender.com

Features

Unlike the classic Tetris game, this version comes packed with some exciting modern features:

• AI Auto-Play: Watch the computer play for you! An integrated AI solver can take control and calculate the best moves step-by-step.
• Colors: Pieces are colored by default for better visibility (can be disabled in options).
• Shadow Preview: A helpful shadow outline appears at the bottom of the grid, showing exactly where your current piece will land.
• Ghost Pieces: A special mode where you can instantly solidify ghost pieces in place.

Controls

• ← / → : Move the piece left or right.
• ↓ : Soft Drop (accelerates the fall of the piece).
• ↑ : Hard Drop (instantly drops the piece to the shadow position). If Ghost Pieces are enabled, it instantly solidifies them in place!
• SPACE : Rotate the piece.
• M / Q / ESC : Return to the main menu.

Options & Settings

When you launch the game, you'll be greeted with an interactive menu. You can customize:

• Speed: Choose between slow, medium, and fast.
• Grid Size (Width & Height): Adjust the dimensions of your playing field.
• Colors: Toggle colored pieces on or off.
• Play Mode: Switch between manual Player mode and AI mode.
• Shadow Preview: Enable or disable the shadow piece indicator.
• Ghost Pieces: Enable or disable the ghost pieces feature.

(Note: Command line arguments like --log, --seed, --piece are also supported for advanced configuration).

How the AI Works

The AI Auto-Play feature uses a heuristic approach known as the Pierre Dellacherie Algorithm. Instead of looking many steps ahead, it evaluates the immediate best move for the current piece: for every new piece, it simulates dropping it in every possible rotation and across every column, then scores the resulting board state on six metrics (+ rewarded, - penalized):

1. Landing Height (-) : Prefers keeping the stack as low as possible.
2. Eroded Pieces (+) : Rewards clearing lines, especially when the current piece contributes to it.
3. Row Transitions (-) : Penalizes jagged horizontal edges.
4. Column Transitions (-) : Penalizes jagged vertical edges.
5. Holes (-) : Heavily penalizes creating empty spaces trapped beneath blocks.
6. Wells (-) : Penalizes creating deep, narrow empty columns.

It simply picks the placement with the highest resulting score and executes the moves step-by-step — no lookahead, no search tree, and it still plays convincingly well.

Launch the game

On Windows

Simply double-click the launch.bat file in the project folder. This will automatically handle setting up the virtual environment, installing dependencies, and launching the game.

On Linux/Mac

1. Make the script executable: chmod +x launch.sh
2. Run the script: ./launch.sh

This script will automatically handle setting up the virtual environment, installing dependencies, and launching the game.