This is a BRILLIANT game! A truly inspired version of Tetris (and there have been MANY variations to the Tetris model).
I love the "interactive" notion of having to manually push the "Tetris trash" pieces to get them just how you want them to be. But it gets more complicated than that - you have to reshape the pieces to form the lines. Even though you can push the garbage back, you could just ruin your chance to make a line and get more time. That's where the strategy comes into play and the shooting of the pieces.
Truly a phenomenal concept!
I would encourage you to update the graphics just a bit because the purely greyscale images are often difficult (to my mind) to discern from the background. Overall, it's not bad but sometimes it tends to blend together. Mind you, the visuals are still top-notch and the old-school pixel art style is perfect! The details are evident and they do pop!
The controls are easy to use and isn't difficult to figure out how to move around the space.
(I did find a small issue during the Name Entry bit after I lost the game. When I tried to enter my name with "Okay" highlighted, pressing the Enter key or Spacebar did not do anything. I had to use my mouse to click on "Okay" to enter my name for the high score.
The music is perfect! It fits the space environment theme similar to the minimalistic bloops and bleeps of the original Metroid soundtrack for the NES. In Metroid, the music was sparse, giving a vibe of isolation and trepidation. In your game, the music is light-hearted but also with a feeling of being far out in space. It feels like the music is "pixelated" with the graphics.
Although I did not get very far, the concept is solid and the presentation was excellent.
Suggestions for improvements:
- Refine the graphics just a bit to make game pieces pop more vividly. Sometimes it was hard to tell active pieces floating to the left from inactive pieces that had reached the far left with all the other garbage stacking up.
- The tutorial at the start is great but a guided process with more details of what happens when you move pieces around and when you push the garbage back would be helpful.
GREAT GAME, Mr Jacobson!!