Tetris Smuggling

Preparation

Build tetris pieces. Buy mosaic tiles (20mmX20mm) in 5 different colours, decide on 5 different shapes of Tetris pieces.

Cut out desired tetris shapes of strong cardboard and glue the tiles onto it to receive robust tetris pieces. You can use a hot glue gun. Equip the tetris pieces with small pieces of double sided tape on the back so that they stick on surfaces in the urban surrounding, but still can be removed and reused.

Download Tetrispieces.jpg

Tetris pieces in a box ready to be pushed.

Prepare playing area. Choose places for each team's tetris piles on the street. Mark places for tetris piles with colored tape naming the fields according to the teams (A, B, C...). The with of the tetris rows equals the length of 6 tiles layed out horizontally.

Download Tetrispile.jpg

Tetris pieces in a box ready to be pushed.

Find tetris music. Put it on an mp3 player connected to a portable amplifier to provide the classic soundtrack for the game.

Depending on the number of players, assign 1 or 2 dealers and 1 or 2 guards. When the game starts, dealers position themselves in a sufficient distance from the tetris piles; guards position themselves between the tetris piles and the dealers.

Rules

During the game players receive tetras pieces one by one from one of the Tetris dealers. Players have to smuggle the received tetris piece past the guard to stick it on the team's Tetris pile. The aim is - just like in tetris - to construct as many full horizontal lines (6 tiles long) as possible. The tetris pieces have to actually stick on the surface (wall, pole, etc.). Like in classic Tetris, you have to build your pile bottom up - always putting your Tetris piece on the top of the others (gaps in the pile that are covered with other pieces already must not be filled).

The dealer choses the Tetris pieces he pushes to the players. Players have no influence on what shape they get. Players do not have to take the tetris peace pushed by the dealer (in case their strategy is to mislead the guides who are watching). But if players already have a piece in their hands, they can not give it back to the dealer. They can hand over pieces to team members though.

Guards can control any player any time while players are passing between the dealer and the tetris piles. During a control guards ask the player if she or he has a tetris piece on her or him. The player always has to answer honestly. In case the guard catches a player with a tetris piece, it will be confiscated and the guard places the piece on the pile of the players team in a weird position (disrupting the teams piling strategy). In case the guard controls a player without a tetris piece, the guard has to close his or her eyes for about 10-15 seconds. In this time the players are free to pass by the guard without the risk of being held up. Optionally the guard can loudly count back in the last seconds that players are warned.

When the playing time (ca. 10 minutes) is up, the number of full horizontal lines in the tetris piles are counted. The team with the highest amount of lines wins.

Rulecard

Download RulecardTetrisSmuggling.jpg

The rulecard for Tetris Smuggling in English and Czech.

Flickr gallery

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(These are the ten most recent Flickr photos of Tetris Smuggling. To add your own, just add the "ludocity:game=tetrissmuggling" tag to your Flickr photos.)

Design and Play history

Tetris smuggling was developed by Invisible Playground at Field Office Prague during 4+4 Days in Motion Festival.

Of course, it references the classic Video Game Tetris by Alexei Paschitnow.

Other games from the Národní Game Set

• Lost Poetry Squad
• The Lucerna Incident
• Our Friend The Golem

• The complete Národní Game Set