Tetris Rules - How Every Mode Works
Tetris looks simple, and at its heart it is: seven falling shapes, one tall well, and a single promise that any row you fill completely will vanish. Learn that one idea and you can sit down at any version of the game anywhere in the world. The depth comes from everything stacked on top of it - How fast the pieces fall, how you twist them into awkward gaps, when to save a piece for later, and how to turn four cleared rows at once into a scoring machine.
This is the full rulebook for Tetris.now. It walks through how a single game works from the empty well to the final top-out, then lays out the exact goal and rules for all eleven modes on the site, from the endless climb of Marathon to the chain reactions of Cascade. Skim the shared basics first, jump to any mode that catches your eye, and keep the glossary open in a tab if a term is new.
💡 Brand new to falling blocks? Read how to play Tetris for a two-minute primer, then start with Marathon - The gentlest place to build clean-stacking habits.
How a game of Tetris works
Strip away the mode-specific twists and every game of Tetris is the same short loop. Here is what is actually happening on the board, one layer at a time.
The well
The tall rectangular playfield is called the well, or matrix. The standard board is ten cells wide and twenty tall, giving you two hundred squares to fill and clear. Pieces enter at the top and fall toward the floor, and your whole game plays out inside this frame. Big mode shrinks the well to a coarse, chunky grid, but every other mode on the site uses the familiar ten-by-twenty shape.
The seven tetrominoes
Every piece is a tetromino - Four squares joined edge to edge. There are exactly seven distinct shapes, each with its own letter name and signature color, and knowing them on sight is the first real skill of Tetris:
- I - cyan. A straight bar of four cells and the only piece that can clear four rows at once for a Tetris.
- O - yellow. A two-by-two square that looks identical however you rotate it.
- T - purple. A row of three with a single bump on top, the piece behind every T-spin.
- S - green. A short zig-zag that steps up from left to right.
- Z - red. The mirror image of the S, stepping down from left to right.
- J - blue. An L-shape with its foot pointing left.
- L - orange. An L-shape with its foot pointing right.
Gravity, locking and the next piece
Gravity pulls the active piece down one row at a time. You steer it left and right and rotate it to fit, and a faint ghost outline shows exactly where it will land. When a piece can fall no further it settles into the stack after a brief lock delay, and the next tetromino spawns at the top. A preview queue shows what is coming, and most modes give you a hold box to park one piece for later.
Clearing lines
Fill all ten cells of a row and it clears instantly. Clearing more rows with a single piece is worth far more: two rows is a double, three is a triple, and four at once is a Tetris, the signature move the game is named after. Advanced clears such as T-spins and back-to-back chains multiply the reward further, which is why the scoring modes reward planning over raw speed.
Topping out
The stack rises whenever you place pieces faster than you clear rows. If it reaches the top and a fresh piece has nowhere to spawn, the game tops out and ends. Keeping the stack low and flat is the single habit that keeps you alive, and every survival mode here is really a contest to hold that top-out line at bay for as long as your hands can.
Every Tetris mode at a glance
Eleven modes, one shared core. This table lines them up by category, board size, difficulty and the exact objective you are chasing. Tap any name to start playing.
| Mode | Category | Board | Difficulty | Objective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marathon | Endless | 10 × 20 | Easy to learn | Clear as many lines as you can by filling complete horizontal rows. Every ten lines raises the level and the falling speed; survive as long as you can and bank the highest score. |
| Zen | Endless | 10 × 20 | Relaxing | Relax and clear lines at your own speed. There is no top-out and no timer, so the only objective is the one you set yourself - A tidy board, a long clearing streak, or simply a few unhurried minutes with the falling pieces. |
| Sprint | Timed | 10 × 20 | Fast & precise | Clear the line goal - 20, 40 or 100 rows - In the shortest possible time. Your finish time is your score, and lower is better, so the whole game is a race against the clock rather than a fight for survival. |
| Ultra | Timed | 10 × 20 | Frantic | Score as many points as possible before the fixed timer - Two or three minutes - Hits zero. There is no line goal and no way to top the clock up, so your only job is turning every second into the highest-value clears you can. |
| Master | Expert | 10 × 20 | Expert | Survive and clear lines under 20G gravity, where every piece slams to the stack the instant it spawns. There is no falling phase to plan during, so the goal is to place each piece cleanly using movement and rotation alone before it locks. |
| Invisible | Expert | 10 × 20 | Brutal | Clear lines on a board that erases itself. Each piece disappears the instant it locks, so your job is to keep a perfect mental map of the hidden stack and keep placing pieces cleanly on top of it for as long as you can. |
| Cheese | Garbage | 10 × 20 | Tricky | Clear every garbage row on the board as fast as you can. The well starts pre-filled with 10 or 18 rows of junk, each with one hole, and the timer stops only when the last garbage line is gone. Lower times win. |
| Survival | Garbage | 10 × 20 | Relentless | Stay alive as long as you can while garbage rises from the bottom of the well. There is no line goal - You simply clear lines to push the rising floor back down, and the game ends when the climbing junk buries your stack. Longer survival wins. |
| Classic | Retro & Big | 10 × 20 | Old-school | Score as high as you can under retro NES-style rules - No hold, no hard drop, and only a short piece preview. Line clears drive the score on a famously steep curve, and the game ends when the accelerating gravity finally tops you out. |
| Big | Retro & Big | 6 × 12 (chunky double blocks) | Chunky | Clear lines using double-size tetrominoes on a coarse, chunky well. The board is far narrower than standard Tetris, so every oversized piece covers a big share of it - Fit the shapes cleanly and clear rows before the stack fills the small playfield. |
| Cascade | Retro & Big | 10 × 20 | Chain-reaction | Clear lines and trigger chain reactions for the biggest combos. After each clear, loose blocks fall under gravity and can complete new rows on their own, so the goal is to engineer stacks that collapse into long cascading chains from a single well-placed piece. |
Endless modes - Stack with no finish line
These modes have no built-in ending. You keep clearing lines until you either top out or simply decide to stop, which makes them the purest expression of the classic Tetris loop.
Marathon Tetris
10 × 20 well · Easy to learn · Level 1 / Level 5 / Level 9
The endless classic - Survive as gravity speeds up every ten lines. Marathon is the Tetris everyone pictures: a ten-wide, twenty-tall well, seven falling tetrominoes, and one simple promise - fill a row and it disappears.
Goal
Clear as many lines as you can by filling complete horizontal rows. Every ten lines raises the level and the falling speed; survive as long as you can and bank the highest score.
Move & rotate
Slide each tetromino left and right and rotate it to fit the gaps in your stack. A ghost outline shows exactly where the piece will land.
Line clears
A row vanishes the instant all ten cells are filled. Clear one to four rows at once - four at a time is a Tetris and pays the most points.
Hold & next
Park a piece in the hold box to save it for later, and read the next-piece queue so you always know what is coming.
Levels & speed
Every ten lines cleared advances the level. Higher levels mean faster gravity and bigger score multipliers, so the reward rises with the risk.
Zen Tetris
10 × 20 well · Relaxing
No top-out, ever - Stack, clear and unwind at your own pace. Zen strips Tetris back to its calmest form: the same ten-wide well and seven tetrominoes, but with the game-over line switched off entirely.
Goal
Relax and clear lines at your own speed. There is no top-out and no timer, so the only objective is the one you set yourself - A tidy board, a long clearing streak, or simply a few unhurried minutes with the falling pieces.
Move & rotate
Nudge each tetromino sideways and spin it to fit your stack. Because nothing is chasing you, take a full breath to line up every placement and let the ghost outline confirm the landing spot.
Line clears
Fill all ten cells in a row and it disappears, exactly as in every Tetris. Single clears are perfectly fine here; there is no pressure to hoard rows for a Tetris unless you want the extra challenge.
Hold & next
Stash a piece in the hold box and glance at the next-piece queue whenever you like. With no speed increase, hold becomes a pure planning tool rather than an emergency escape hatch.
Stack without limits
Let the stack climb as high as you dare - It will never end the game. Rebuild a flat surface from a tower whenever you feel like it and treat the whole well as a sandbox.
Timed modes - Race the clock
Here the clock is the whole game. One mode races you to clear a fixed number of lines as fast as possible; the other counts how many points you can bank before time runs out.
Sprint (40 Lines)
10 × 20 well · Fast & precise · 20 Lines / 40 Lines / 100 Lines
Clear the line goal as fast as your fingers allow. Sprint flips Tetris into a race against the clock.
Goal
Clear the line goal - 20, 40 or 100 rows - In the shortest possible time. Your finish time is your score, and lower is better, so the whole game is a race against the clock rather than a fight for survival.
Move & rotate
Steer each tetromino into place with as few inputs as you can. In Sprint, every unnecessary tap or extra rotation is wasted time, so smooth, minimal movement is worth as much as raw stacking skill.
Hard drop
Slam pieces straight down with hard drop instead of letting them float. Hard dropping locks the piece instantly and saves the fractions of a second that separate a good Sprint time from a great one.
Line clears
Any clear counts toward your goal, but efficient players still favor Tetrises and doubles because fewer, bigger clears mean fewer pieces placed and less time spent. Choose the clear that keeps your hands moving.
Finesse
Finesse is placing each piece with the theoretical minimum number of button presses. Learning the optimal input for every piece and column is the single biggest time-saver in Sprint, more than raw reaction speed.
Ultra (Time Attack)
10 × 20 well · Frantic · 2 Minutes / 3 Minutes
Bank the biggest score you can before the clock hits zero. Ultra fixes the clock and asks a single question: how many points can you squeeze out before time runs out? You get two or three minutes on the same standard well, and instead of racing to a line goal you are racing to inflate a score.
Goal
Score as many points as possible before the fixed timer - Two or three minutes - Hits zero. There is no line goal and no way to top the clock up, so your only job is turning every second into the highest-value clears you can.
Move & rotate
Place pieces quickly but deliberately, since a topped-out board wastes precious seconds on a restart you cannot afford. Speed matters, but a wasted setup hurts your score more than a slightly slower placement.
T-spins
Twist a T-piece into a notch to score a T-spin, which pays far more than a normal clear of the same size. Building repeatable T-spin setups is one of the fastest ways to run your Ultra score up.
Line clears
Favor four-line Tetrises and multi-line clears over singles; the score gap is enormous. A single barely registers on the Ultra clock, while a Tetris or a T-spin double moves your total in real leaps.
Hold & next
Use hold to keep an I-piece ready for your Tetris well and read the queue to line up T-spin towers. Managing your resources is what lets you cash big clears back to back instead of scoring in dribs.
Expert modes - For seasoned stackers
Built to punish. These modes remove the comfort of a gentle fall or a visible board, demanding instant decisions and a sharp memory from the very first piece.
Master Tetris
10 × 20 well · Expert
20G gravity - Every piece slams to the floor the instant it spawns. Master is Tetris with the brakes cut.
Goal
Survive and clear lines under 20G gravity, where every piece slams to the stack the instant it spawns. There is no falling phase to plan during, so the goal is to place each piece cleanly using movement and rotation alone before it locks.
Gravity & speed
At 20G a tetromino covers the whole well in one frame, so it arrives already grounded. You never watch a piece fall; you catch it on the surface and slide it into position during the brief window before it locks down.
Rotate & slide
Because you cannot drop pieces into place, you rotate and shuffle them across the top of the stack instead. Rotation kicks let a piece twist into a gap even when it lands flush against a wall or a bump.
Line clears
Clears work as always - Fill a row to erase it - But you have to assemble them entirely on the surface. Flat stacking is doubly important because there is no time to thread pieces into deep, awkward wells.
Hold & next
Read the next queue relentlessly, because at 20G you must know a piece's destination before it spawns. Hold lets you set aside an awkward piece for the split second you need to prepare its landing spot.
Invisible Tetris
10 × 20 well · Brutal
Pieces vanish the moment they lock - Play the whole board from memory. Invisible Tetris is a memory test disguised as a stacking game.
Goal
Clear lines on a board that erases itself. Each piece disappears the instant it locks, so your job is to keep a perfect mental map of the hidden stack and keep placing pieces cleanly on top of it for as long as you can.
Move & rotate
Steer and spin the falling piece normally - It stays visible while you control it, and the ghost outline still shows where it will land. The challenge begins the moment it locks and vanishes into the hidden stack.
Line clears
Filling a row still clears it, but you have to know the row is full without seeing it. Tracking exactly which lines are one cell short is the central memory task of the entire mode.
Hold & next
The hold box and next-piece queue stay fully visible - They are your most reliable lifelines. Planning several pieces ahead lets you commit to placements before your mental picture of the board starts to blur.
Memory & the stack
Because the stack is invisible, build in simple, memorable patterns - Flat rows and predictable columns - So the layout is easy to hold in your head. Every clear also shifts everything down, which you must track with no visual help at all.
Garbage modes - Dig or drown
Both of these hand you a board full of junk. One is a fixed wall you race to excavate; the other is an endless tide that rises until it buries you.
Cheese Tetris
10 × 20 well · Tricky · 10 Rows / 18 Rows
Dig through a wall of garbage and punch out every hole. Cheese Tetris hands you a board that is already a mess.
Goal
Clear every garbage row on the board as fast as you can. The well starts pre-filled with 10 or 18 rows of junk, each with one hole, and the timer stops only when the last garbage line is gone. Lower times win.
Dig down
Feed pieces into the single gap in each garbage row to complete and clear it. Because the holes rarely stack in the same column, digging means constantly rerouting pieces to wherever the next gap sits.
Garbage rows
Each garbage line is solid except for one cell. Reading where those holes are - And how they shift as rows clear - Is the whole puzzle, so scan the wall before you commit a piece rather than reacting row by row.
Move & rotate
Thread narrow pieces into narrow gaps using precise slides and rotation kicks. I-pieces and L or J shapes are your best digging tools for reaching holes tucked against a wall or under an overhang.
Hold & next
Bank an I-piece in hold for a hole you cannot reach yet, and read the next queue to plan your dig two or three pieces deep. Efficient routing beats raw speed for a fast Cheese time.
Survival Tetris
10 × 20 well · Relentless
Garbage keeps rising from the floor - Clear fast or drown. Survival turns Tetris into a war of attrition.
Goal
Stay alive as long as you can while garbage rises from the bottom of the well. There is no line goal - You simply clear lines to push the rising floor back down, and the game ends when the climbing junk buries your stack. Longer survival wins.
Rising floor
Every few seconds a new garbage row pushes up from the bottom, lifting your whole stack toward the ceiling. The interval shortens as you play, so the pressure mounts and the space you have to work in keeps shrinking.
Line clears
Clearing lines is your only weapon - Each cleared row buys back space and offsets the garbage climbing up beneath you. Bigger clears buy more room, so a Tetris pushes back far harder than a string of singles.
Move & rotate
Place pieces quickly and precisely, keeping the stack low so a sudden garbage push does not shove you into the ceiling. Slide and rotate into the garbage gaps to keep clearing from the bottom up.
Hold & next
Keep an I-piece ready in hold for a fast multi-line clear when the garbage surges, and read the next queue so you can plan clears before the floor rises again. Preparation is what keeps you ahead of the timer.
Retro and big-block modes - A different feel
This group changes the furniture rather than the goal, whether by stripping the game back to its 1980s rules, doubling the size of every block, or rewriting how the board falls after a clear.
Classic Tetris
10 × 20 well · Old-school
Retro rules: 3-piece preview, no hold, no hard drop, just nerve. Classic strips Tetris back to its 1989 console roots.
Goal
Score as high as you can under retro NES-style rules - No hold, no hard drop, and only a short piece preview. Line clears drive the score on a famously steep curve, and the game ends when the accelerating gravity finally tops you out.
Move & rotate
Shift and rotate each piece as it falls, since there is no hard drop to place it instantly. Every piece must be steered into position during its descent, which makes timing and quick tapping the core retro skills.
Soft drop
Your only speed-up is the soft drop, which nudges a piece down faster but locks it where it lands. There is no slamming pieces home - You guide them down and let gravity finish the placement.
Line clears
Clearing lines is the whole score, and a four-line Tetris at a high level pays enormous points on the retro curve. Because there is no hold, you must build your Tetris well using only the pieces gravity hands you in order.
Levels & speed
The level rises with your line count and each one drops pieces faster, all the way to the infamous kill screen where gravity becomes nearly unmanageable. Surviving the speed ramp is as much the challenge as the scoring.
Big Tetris
6 × 12 (chunky double blocks) well · Chunky
Double-size tetrominoes on a chunky well - Every move counts double. Big Tetris supersizes the whole game.
Goal
Clear lines using double-size tetrominoes on a coarse, chunky well. The board is far narrower than standard Tetris, so every oversized piece covers a big share of it - Fit the shapes cleanly and clear rows before the stack fills the small playfield.
Move & rotate
Slide and spin the oversized pieces just as you would normal ones, but remember each move shifts the piece across a coarse grid. A single column of travel covers a much larger slice of the narrow well, so placements need extra care.
Big blocks
Every tetromino is built from double-size cells, making each piece chunky and space-hungry. There is no room for delicate maneuvers, so think of the board in large, simple chunks and place pieces where they sit flush.
Line clears
Filling a row still clears it, but rows are only a few big cells wide, so clears come quickly and a single misplacement can block one just as fast. Keeping the surface flat matters even more on so narrow a well.
Hold & next
Use hold and the next preview to plan around the cramped space, since one badly placed oversized piece is much harder to recover from here. Reading ahead keeps you from committing a chunky shape you have nowhere to put.
Cascade Tetris
10 × 20 well · Chain-reaction
Floating blocks fall after each clear, setting off cascading combos. Cascade rewrites what happens after a line clears.
Goal
Clear lines and trigger chain reactions for the biggest combos. After each clear, loose blocks fall under gravity and can complete new rows on their own, so the goal is to engineer stacks that collapse into long cascading chains from a single well-placed piece.
Cascade
When a row clears, the cells above it do not drop as one solid block - Each falls individually under gravity. That means a single clear can rearrange the whole board and set off further clears you did not directly stack.
Move & rotate
Place pieces to build deliberate overhangs and unstable shapes, not just flat rows. In Cascade an overhang is not a mistake but a loaded spring, ready to collapse into a chain once the block beneath it clears.
Line clears
Clearing one row can trigger several more as blocks fall and complete new lines. Each link in the chain scores as its own clear, so a single trigger can pay off many times over if you plan the collapse well.
Hold & next
Read the next queue and use hold to line up the exact trigger piece your structure needs. Because the payoff comes from the chain reaction, planning which piece sets it off matters as much as the stacking itself.
Terms that apply to every mode
These eight words show up in the rules for every mode above. Learn them once and the rest reads like plain English. Each card links to a fuller definition in the Tetris glossary.
The tetrominoes
The seven four-cell shapes you drop into the well - I, O, T, S, Z, J and L. Full definition.
The well and matrix
The ten-by-twenty playfield where every piece falls and every row is cleared. Full definition.
Clearing a row
Filling a complete row so it vanishes, from a single up to a four-row Tetris. Full definition.
The hold box
A side slot where you park one piece to save it for the moment you need it. Full definition.
The preview queue
The strip showing the pieces still to come, so you can plan several moves ahead. Full definition.
The ghost outline
The faint marker showing exactly where the falling piece will land if you drop it now. Full definition.
Dropping a piece
Slamming a piece straight to the bottom so it locks instantly, the fastest way to place it. Full definition.
The T-spin move
Twisting a T-piece into a notch it could not slide into, a high-scoring advanced clear. Full definition.
Ready to put the rules to work? Take on today's daily challenge, race a friend in multiplayer, or open the Tetris FAQ for the questions new players ask most.
Tetris rules FAQ
What are the core rules that every Tetris mode shares?
Every mode on Tetris.now runs on the same foundation: seven tetromino shapes fall one at a time into a ten-column well, you slide and rotate each one as it drops, and any row you fill completely disappears. Pieces lock where they land, the blocks above a cleared row settle down, and the game ends if the stack grows into the top. What changes from mode to mode is the goal, the speed and the starting board, never that basic loop.
How does a full row disappear in Tetris?
A row clears the instant all ten of its cells are filled, with no gaps left. Clear one row for a single, two for a double, three for a triple, and four at once - Using a vertical I-piece dropped into a full-height gap - For a Tetris, the highest-scoring basic clear. When a row vanishes, every block above it drops to fill the space, which is why a flat stack makes clean clears far easier.
What causes a top-out and ends the game?
A top-out happens when a new piece has no room to spawn because the stack has climbed into the top of the well. In survival modes like Marathon, Master and Classic this ends the run at once. Zen removes the top-out entirely so you can never lose, while Sprint, Ultra and Cheese end on their own goal - A line count or a clock - Rather than on a full board.
Why do the eleven modes feel so different if the rules are the same?
Because each mode moves one lever. Marathon speeds gravity up every ten lines, Sprint fixes a line goal and times you, Ultra fixes a clock and counts points, Master starts at instant 20G gravity, Invisible hides your locked pieces, Cheese and Survival bury you in garbage, Classic strips out hold and hard drop, Big doubles the blocks, and Cascade lets loose blocks fall after each clear. The core stays constant while the objective and the pressure shift.
How are the falling pieces chosen in Tetris?
Most modern modes use a seven-bag randomizer: the seven tetrominoes are shuffled into a bag and dealt out one by one, so every shape appears exactly once before the bag refills. That guarantees you never wait too long for an I-piece and lets you plan ahead. Classic mode is the exception, using an older, more random selection that can hand you long droughts of the piece you need.
Want more answers? Read the full Tetris FAQ, browse the whole lineup of modes, or look up any word in the glossary.