Most games award points to the player for completing various tasks. The earliest games awarded points only for dropping tetrominoes, and some even gave a penalty for leaving piece preview turned on.
After Tetris for Game Boy, most games adopted a scoring system designed to reward difficult clears by giving points for more lines cleared at once. Some systems also encouraged starting at a higher difficulty.
Original Nintendo Scoring System[]
This score was used in Nintendo's versions of Tetris for NES, for Game Boy, and for Super NES.
| Level | Points for 1 line |
Points for 2 lines |
Points for 3 lines |
Points for 4 lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 40 | 100 | 300 | 1200 |
| 1 | 80 | 200 | 600 | 2400 |
| 2 | 120 | 300 | 900 | 3600 |
| 9 | 400 | 1000 | 3000 | 12000 |
| n | 40 * (n + 1) | 100 * (n + 1) | 300 * (n + 1) | 1200 * (n + 1) |
For each piece, the game also awards the number of points equal to the number of grid spaces that the player has continuously soft dropped the piece. Unlike the points for lines, this does not increase per level.
The New Tetris[]
The New Tetris awards "lines": one for each line cleared, one extra line for clearing four lines with one I tetromino, and several lines for clearing parts of a 4x4 square. This does not increase as the game gets faster. Soft and firm drops do not give points instead, they allow the player to place more tetrominoes (and clear more lines) in the three minute sprint game.
Tetris Worlds[]
Each mode of Tetris Worlds has its own scoring system. As in The New Tetris, the unit of score in each mode is lines 2, 3, and 4-line clears grant additional points in some modes.
Tetris Deluxe[]
Tetris Deluxe scoring system is similar to Tetris Worlds.
Tetris DS[]
Each mode of Tetris DS has its own scoring system. Most notably, the system used in Standard mode represents a fusion of the 1, 3, 5, 8 pattern used in several modes of Tetris Worlds with the section multiplier of the NES and Game Boy system.
Guideline scoring system[]
Most games released after Tetris DS have the same scoring system. Here is the guideline scoring system as of 2009 (uses 3-corner T).
| Action | Point Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Single/Mini T-Spin | 100×level | |
| Mini T-Spin Single | 200×level | |
| Double | 300×level | |
| T-Spin/Mini T-Spin Double | 400×level | |
| Triple | 500×level | |
| B2B Mini T-Spin Double | 600×level | |
| Tetris/T-Spin Single | 800×level | |
| B2B T-Spin Single/B2B Tetris/T-Spin Double | 1,200×level | |
| T-Spin Triple | 1,600×level | |
| B2B T-Spin Double | 1,800×level | |
| B2B T-Spin Triple | 2,400×level | |
| Combo | (move value+50)×level | |
| Soft drop | 1 point per cell | |
| Hard drop | 2 points per cell |