My Game of the Year is a Freeware Asynchronous Tetris MMO on Itch.io
originally posted on Cohost, 08-28-2023
Though only by technicality. Junk by y2bd was a Ludum Dare Game Jam submission back in 2017, but it has been substantially updated more than once in 2023. For my purposes, this qualifies it to be my game of the year – at the very least, it’s the single recent release which has claimed the most of my game-playing hours. Junk is an iteration on Tetris which does not start with a blank slate, but continues on a board someone else had already been working on. At the start of every round, the board scrolls from the bottom of the block pile all the way up to the top, where the previous player left off and the current play session will begin. Upon the command of an unapologetically strict two-minute timer, this same board will be sent to yet another user regardless of how much cluttering or de-cluttering has been done. Players are prompted to submit their username at the end of each play session, and that username will be displayed for the next player who gains possession of the board.
There have been players whose usernames I’ve only ever seen one time. They’re usually the ones responsible for button-mashing hard-drop pile-ups – and who can blame them? Faced with a completely consequence-free Tetris board with the promise that it will be whisked away, becoming someone else’s problem in just a short two minutes... Who wouldn’t be tempted to meteor-shower an onslaught of haphazard blocks? It was my first instinct upon initial boot-up as well. I would have acted on it too, if the scroll from the bottom of the stack up to the top hadn’t revealed that the player immediately previous to me had already acted on the exact same impulse. That single-line tower wordlessly unmasked any sense of self-important individuality I was about to perpetrate onto this board. My vain compulsion to prove my existence to the next user had been revealed to be neither unique nor endearing; what sat before me was a pile of problems which nobody would want to clean up for themselves, but had no issue leaving for someone else. This was not the digital Cueva de las Manos I nearly diluted myself into pretending it was. This was a stranger leaving their dirty dishes in my sink, taking for granted the fact that I will wash them even without being asked to. I decided the most effective way to leave my mark (if I was to leave a mark at all) would not be to continue piling on dirty dishes, but to clean as many as I could. To lighten the next user’s burden, not make it heavier. This is not nearly as flashy or immediately gratifying as a barrage of garbage blocks – to do so effectively would make my involvement nearly invisible – but it is significantly more valuable to the actual players who will receive this board. In an instant, this slightly unpolished freeware version of Tetris with a single defining gimmick turned from a quirky commodity to a display of deliberate compassion and blind kindness, to help a nameless future someone for helping’s sake alone.
There have been players who contributed with enough regularity that I could start identifying their playstyles. I’ve seen players who habitually stacked on the left side of the board rather than the right side, and vise-versa. I’ve seen players who planned for T-spins and those who didn’t. I’ve seen players who regularly kept their stacks clean and players who couldn’t help but be a little messy. I’ve seen players whose usernames were properly capitalized forenames and others who used internet aliases. This, to me, is humanity. Their personalities glowed in the rainbow-brick walls we built and tore down together. I learned about them in the same way they must have been able to learn about me. In their own self-expressed ways, these players became people. Our continuing play sessions were not a commitment to the game with its mechanics or systems – there’s an infinite amount of Tetris versions to play out there, many of them providing more finely-tuned gameplay nuances and more appealing presentations. No, if someone continued returning to this version of Tetris in particular, it was a quiet confession: “I like you guys.” It was a commitment not to the game, but to each other.
There have been nights where only myself and one other user share the same few boards back and forth. I feel embarrassed talking about these gameplay sessions the same way I’d feel embarrassed talking about private relations with a partner or personal conversations with a close friend. The knowledge that my boards would be going exclusively to one single active user imbued my playing with a certain intimacy. I felt a pressure to perform well. I hoped they would notice how low the “junk” number was, that they would be impressed and proud of me. I was proud and impressed when they sent me low “junk” numbers of their own. Finishing a round with a sloppy board had me scrambling to start a new round in the hopes that the same board would be handed back to me, so I could clean it up properly before they would see it. In the event of receiving a poorly stacked board from the other player, of course I was never as judgmental as I was afraid they would be of me. I simply saw that they were having trouble, so I did what I could to help out. I wonder if the other player felt the same guilt and shame of sending a bad board over as I did. I hope they know I didn’t mind.
Inevitably, all these users leave the game behind. I can say this with absolute certainty. Maybe they found a version of Tetris they prefer more, maybe they stop being in the mood for Tetris altogether, or maybe they just forget about it. I see when new players pick up the game for the first time, I see when some of those new players continue pecking at the game for a few days, and I see when even fewer players attune to some degree of the same dedication I have fallen victim to. None of them stay for as long as I have, though. I wouldn’t hesitate to call some of those users friends. I don’t know anything about them, but I helped them, I cared about them, just as they helped and cared about me. Without ceremony, they submit their last boards, and quietly let the play sessions of other players wash away any blocks they left behind. A new user who loads the game up for the first time could clear away the last remaining row from an inactive player’s final play session and never even know it. Maybe I’ve done that myself. I'm certain I’ve done that myself. Some day another user will wipe away the final blocks I leave behind, too – maybe in an attempt to please the single other user they’re currently trading boards with. This is not just Tetris. This is intimacy, this is kindness and compassion, this is leaving a legacy behind, this is proving your existence to another human being. And that’s why it’s my game of the year thank you