minesweeper and tetris

2022-02-27

i spent most of today in bed, but these past few hours, i have been going off in this one version of minesweeper. i set a record for 13x13, 27 mines at 11.082 seconds, and all most other attempts were plateauing at 11 seconds or worse. in one of my attempts though, i had all the mines placed correctly except for one, and i lost, because in this version, a win is based on if you have 27 flags and if they're in the right spot. in the exact moment i lost, i looked at my time, and it was 9.2something seconds. half a second later, it reset to 0:00.000, a weird quirk of the game that only lets you consider your losses for half a second. so i only had half a second to really consider "0:09.2xx," which is 20% faster than my current record. absolutely inhumane.

as i started up a new level, i thought about how powerful i can be in minesweeper, even though i just lost. there is so much joy in being incredible at a game, and also despite taking months-long breaks. while minesweeper is just a one-hand game, something interesting to note is that i'm left-handed, and use a mouse with my right hand. i might have worse aim than if i was born right-handed, but i'm still rockin.

i also finally set a 1:04 pb for tetris, and yesterday i beat tetris effect (connected) expert mode, which was a nice audiovisual experience. if someone reading has tetris effect: connected, i'd be down to play with you. i need to relisten to the ost, there were some pretty good songs i heard. i also still need to instinctualize that the red one is a z shape and the green one is an s shape. i keep moving them to holes meant for the other shape, and lose time from that. i also need to learn their rotation, because it fucks me up when they move to a weird spot when i just wanted to make them stand vertically.

a really good tetris player who has 3.72 pps once talked about changing her control config to consist of only home row keys because there's less finger movement, increasing speed. mine is almost that way, but it would still be pretty difficult for me to switch to that. in my setup, my left hand presses asdr + space, while my right presses ijkl.

a: soft drop

s: rotate 180, or nothing

d: hold

r: retry

space: hard drop

i: rotate clockwise

j: move left

k: rotate counter-clockwise

l: move right

i think i used wasd in 2020 and maybe some weird , . / controls, since i was already doing that for celeste, but then i felt like using my right hand for movement, maybe because it was the default in tetris effect.

recently, in tetris, i retry too often. if something is less than perfect, i hit r. about 70% of my tetris sprints are just unfinished games. this is especially annoying when i get a really good sprint in tetris, but instinctively hit retry after one mistake. also, since d and r are close together, if often retry when i want to hold.

an issue i have in minesweeper is being overzealous in my guessing. i flag and slice through cells even when there isn't a 100% chance of it being right. this is mostly to save time - i can solve boards without guessing (except for the 50-50s) if i wanted. so when i win, the board has to yield to my will, rather than me yielding to the board. i lose 90% of my games as a result, and another 9% is lost due to misclicks and endgame luck.

still, these games are very fun. in minesweeper, the speedy slicing and gliding through boards is really satisfying. feels like cutting through masses of enemies in a hack and slash. in tetris, just placing tetrominos and getting combos are nice, especially with good sound design.

i usually get too caught up in chasing lower times to really appreciate these aspects. sometimes i even move on to the next attempt immediately after setting a new pb, not even pausing to screenshot or consider that i met my goal, i could stop now.

update 2022-07-11 renamed