How to play Block Blitz

Block Blitz is the falling-block stacker. Seven shapes tumble down a well ten columns wide, and you fit them together into complete rows.

The rules

Each piece can be rotated and moved sideways as it falls. A soft drop speeds its descent; a hard drop slams it straight down and scores extra.

When a row is filled across all ten columns it clears, and everything above it drops down.

Pieces fall faster as your level rises. The game ends when a new piece can no longer fit at the top.

The tools

A ghost outline shows where the current piece will land, so placement is a decision rather than a judgement of depth.

The next-piece preview lets you plan one move ahead — and planning one move ahead is the difference between a stack you are managing and a stack that is managing you.

Hold stashes a piece you cannot use yet and gives it back later. It is a get-out-of-jail card for the piece that does not fit anywhere.

Scoring, and why flat is not the goal

Clearing one row scores. Clearing several in a single drop scores far more, and clearing four at once is the largest reward in the game.

This is the tension the whole game runs on. Playing safe — clearing every row as soon as it is available — keeps you alive and scores poorly. Building nine columns high and leaving one empty for the long piece scores enormously and risks everything, because if the long piece does not arrive you are stacking into a well you cannot fill.

So the real skill is not tidiness. It is knowing how much risk your current stack can carry.

Keeping the stack playable

Two habits keep a stack alive.

Keep the surface flat, apart from any well you are deliberately maintaining. A jagged surface has holes only one specific piece can fill, and the game does not owe you that piece.

Never bury a hole. A covered gap cannot be cleared until everything above it goes, and each buried hole effectively raises your floor for the rest of the game. Taking a worse placement now to avoid covering a gap is nearly always correct.

Where to put the well

If you are building for a four-row clear, put the well on the far left or far right rather than in the middle. An edge well only needs the pieces on one side of it to be tidy, and the long piece slots in with a single move rather than a slide across the board.

Speed

Levels get faster indefinitely, so every game ends. Past a certain speed you no longer have time to plan placements — which is why the planning has to be done during the slow levels, in the shape of the stack you leave behind.