Tetrunnel (poorly named Tetris clone)

Game Play & Game Design
#1

I decided last night to take a break from making a hardcore game and attempt to make a game I thought up a few days ago.

Essentially you’re a Tetris block heading down a tunnel, you rotate around the tunnel and place yourself. You are always falling down this tunnel, when you place yourself on the map you continue until you hit the exact same map except you’re a new block.

Here’s a picture (sorry if it’s hard to see with color, not with the time using textures until I get this worked out).

(also note in this picture you only see one instance of your map, there will be several into the distance to make it look like a tunnel and not a simple cylinder)

My problem is figuring out how (if possible) making the “map” easier to understand as you’re falling. Since you don’t see much of the faces its hard to do… suggestions?

#2

Perhaps having a mini-grid in the corner using the standard tetris grid, or maybe being able to rotste your view while holding, say, mouse2?

#3

Hey, that’s what I just tried! (except I centered mine). I think it might take away from the tunnel experience if people are just watching the mini grid.

Hmm, I don’t know how well rotating the camera around the block would work out - I plan on making this for mobile phones/tablets and that might not be an effective design decision.

Thanks for your input, I’ll keep on thinking!

#4

Try having bold red lines at regular intervals, say every 4 rows (tetris) to give a perspective of how far down user is. Maybe have a meter on the bottom right showing % of “well” that is full. Having more distinct shapes (lines at edges of each “cube”) would also help with perception.