Block Blaster

Block Blaster looks like Tetris and plays nothing like it. Nothing falls, nothing is on a timer, and you cannot rotate a piece. You are handed shapes and you place them on an eight-by-eight grid, and a row or column that fills completely disappears. Removing the time pressure sounds like it would make the game easier and it does the opposite — with no clock to blame, every game you lose is a game you thought your way out of a position and were wrong. The failure condition is simply that none of your available shapes fit anywhere, and that state usually becomes inevitable four or five moves before it actually happens.

You are given shapes to place onto the grid. Drag each one to an empty area that fits it. Filling an entire row or an entire column clears it and frees that space. The game ends when none of the shapes you have been given can be placed anywhere on the board. Because you cannot rotate anything, a shape either fits as dealt or it does not.

Protect the middle. Holes in the centre of the board are far harder to fill than holes at the edge, because a centre gap blocks both a row and a column at once. Place against existing blocks rather than in open space — scattered single squares are what eventually kill you. Look at all the shapes you have been given before placing the first, since the order you place them in usually matters more than where. And always keep room for the largest shape in the set; the game ends the moment the big one has nowhere to go, no matter how much total empty space is left.