1D Tetris

1D Tetris or Tetris 1D is a version of Tetris made to be one dimensional, mostly as a math joke. The game exists in a number of versions, some of them free software. The game is also sometimes described as Tetris for those who think that regular Tetris is too hard.

Game play
The game takes place in a single line in which blocks, only varying by the amount making up the shape's height, fall down to the bottom of the line. Once they do, the player gains a higher score. In most versions pressing the down key will increase the block's rate of fall, or in the case of the iPod Linux version, the centerkey. There is no way to lose the game, and the only known way to win is to achieve the highest score - eg, leave the program running the longest. It seems to be assumed on an honour system that you actually "play" the game to the high score by observing it the whole time, rather than just leaving it running in the background.

The game is not actually one dimensional in the true mathematical sense, since its objects technically have both height and width. However, the only closer, and still technically inaccurate, simulation possible than the lines in this game is a line with less or just a single pixel. The objects do only move in one dimension and on only one axis.

It was most famously available from http://www.tetris1d.org/  (archived 2017-11-27), but there is no option to download the source code and as such it is not free software. There are multiple versions of the game however by different authors, such as a module for iPod Linux. This module has its code and the like available for download. Another version is for MIT's Scratch language, titled as Tetris 1D, and its source code and images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

The game has become modestly popular simply for its novelty value. Putting "1D Tetris" into the Google serach engine will offer you realted results up until page nine, page twelve on Google Images. The game also comes up early in a Google search for just "1D". 1D Tetris was included in the "Zero Gamer" Exhibition as a "game that tests the viewers' endurance in meditative inaction." The game is also mentioned on Wikipedia.