Tetris 99 is a surprise when it was released last week. It's never been in the history that we see someone integrate the emerging battle royale into arguably the most extraordinary games in the last 3 decades.
Tetris was once perfect with only 1 formula that hasn't been changed for 35 years. But everything seems to have changed with this new multiplayer mode in Tetris 99, a great improvement from the classic Tetris DS.
Since the game hasn't launched manually, its mechanics besides the familiar controls were given for the game community to explore by themselves. Just nearly right after the release, a Reddit thread started to analyze these mechanics and came up with a certain amount of strategies.
How about we begin with Tetris 99's most basic mechanics. You still want to perform a line clear. Be that as it may, because you are playing multiplayer, you need to frustrate your rivals by sending garbage to their boards. Clearing only 1 line won't do a lot other than to tidy them up from your own board. To convey garbage to rivals, you have to clear at least 2 lines at once. For 2 or 3 lines cleared, you convey 1 and 2 garbage lines individually to the opponents, respectively. For a Tetris (clearing 4 lines at a time), you convey 4 lines. These can be enhanced by combos or a unique move dubbed a T-Spin.
Because you can attack other players, you should expect that they can counter or attack you also. The garbage lines sent by your opponents will queue up on the right of your board and after some time these lines will appear in the board. There's only 1 effective way to clear the garbage lines that is performing as many as line clears as possible. Only after finishing clearing your garbage lines can you attack your opponents. As the players' number shrinks, the delay time between each line in the queue will gradually decrease from 4 seconds in the beginning to only 1 second.
As a battle royale game, you gain kills in Tetris 99 also. But's the gotcha is how exactly these kills are determined is not clear yet, it seems like that the last player to successfully send an attack line will be rewarded with the kill. With every kills you will get badges' fragments. These badges can play a crucial role in the game.
The maximum number of badges you can naturally get throughout the game is 4, with each kills step of 2, 6, 16, 30, you will get a separate badge as each kill gives you 1 fragment. Each badge you get will give you a garbage line bonus worthing 25% so if you get all 4 badges you will double your garbage lines output. Earning these badges is entirely vital as the bonus rewards help your guard against solid assaults from other opponents in the game who try to take you down. Notably, if you knock out (K.O) any player, you will receive their badges as rewards.
If you want to facilitate the attempt of getting badges, you need a solid strategy. Tetris 99 features 4 types of methods to target opponents, though 1 of them is for all intents and purposes pointless. Flicking the stick to the left will automatically target an arbitrary opponent after each time you attack someone so try to avoid this move. The manual method using the right stick, on the other hand, is rather too hard for the majority of gamers to use.
Keep in mind that the keys to winning the game are focusing on taking down others, getting badges and defending against the attackers. Targeting the players who have the most badges in the game is a rather good idea and in order to do so, you need to flick right on the stick. While this may appear to be a decent method to get many badges as rewards, it's a sure approach to irritate the strongest player in the game. So it's not encouraged to do this except if you have a pleasant board with no fewer than 1 badge in your hand.
A risky yet interesting targeting method is the retaliating method. By flick down on the stick, you will in turn attack those who have attacked you. This targeting method seems especially effective when you are being attacked by many people, the reason behind this is the more players attack you, the more garbage lines bonus you have. For example, if 2 players attack you, you get only 1 bonus garbage line, but from the 3rd person, for each attacker, you get 2 bonus garbage lines. With a total of 6 attackers, you will get a whopping 9 bonus lines. While this is scary yet stressful, if you use the attacking method, you will gain more advantages.
The last move, flicking up on the stick, will help you enact a K.O target method. Though the mechanics of this method is yet to exactly figured out yet, it seems like that it aids you to attack those who are nearly taken out of the game. Thanks for this function, it is easy to see why it proves to be the most used and effective method in the early and mid phases of the game. Use it wisely and you can put your hands on a whole lot of badges.
Nevertheless, the most important thing to learn from the targeting methods is that you won't win utilizing just a single method to target opponents. There is a recurring pattern of how the fight happens and keeping in mind that there are some comparative examples, you should most likely modify with different situations while playing. In the event that you realize you're getting attacked by a lot of players, flick the stick down to retaliate your opponents and try to attack as many of them as possible while having the advantage of the extra lines. If you find out you are having a decent amount of badges and good board then take the risk of attacking the strongest player. While you have all the rights to alter and try every strategy and method to win the game, it's essential to fail-and-learn to gradually become more skillful with the game.
Tetris 99 is still new and there is a lot for us to discover, yet it has proved to be a potential battle royale integrated into a legendary title which is full of joy to play and share your moments with the community.
Check out some useful tips in Tetris 99
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