Sandtris vs Tetris: How This Falling Block Puzzle Differs

Sandtris belongs to the same family as Tetris: shapes fall from the top of a well and you try to stop the pile from reaching the top. Past that first look, almost every rule is different. This post sets the two side by side so a Tetris player knows what to unlearn.

Who made Sandtris

Sandtris is a browser game by the studio A-Team, released on Poki in September 2024. Poki describes it as a block puzzle game in which falling blocks turn to sand once they land, and you clear the sand by covering the surface from left to right with the same colour. See the Sandtris page on Poki.

The main differences

Rule	Tetris	Sandtris
What clears	A full horizontal row of cells	A connected patch of one colour that touches both side walls
Colour	Only shows which piece is which	Decides everything: four sand colours, and only one colour can make a clear
Pieces	Seven four-square pieces	Five shapes, including a five-square plus sign
Rotation	Core skill	None. Shapes fall the way they appear
After landing	Piece locks in place	Piece breaks into grains that slide and fill gaps
Holes	Gaps under overhangs stay	Sand fills most gaps by itself
Help	Hold piece in many versions	Next preview, a Skip button and a Clear button

Two ways to play

The menu offers two modes, and each keeps its own best score and music track.

• Classic: each new block waits at the top for as long as you like. You move it into place and drop it when you are ready, so it plays more like a calm puzzle than a race.
• Speeding: blocks start falling on their own a moment after they appear, and you steer them on the way down. Each new block falls a little faster than the one before, up to a set top speed. Poki calls it the speeding-up mode where blocks fall faster and faster.

Controls compared

A Tetris player reaches for rotate and hard drop. Sandtris only needs two actions: aim and drop.

• Mouse or touch: move the pointer or swipe left and right to aim, then click or tap the field to drop (in Classic).
• Keyboard: Left/Right arrows or A/D move the block. Space, S or the Down arrow drops it. Escape opens the settings panel.

The Up arrow and W do nothing in Sandtris. There is no rotation, so a habit carried over from Tetris costs nothing but does not help either.

First run and saved games

The first time you open Sandtris it plays a three-step tutorial. It asks you to place a block in the middle, shows you how to use Skip on a block whose colour does not fit, and explains that bigger same-colour layers score more. After that the game remembers your field: if you leave in the middle of a game, the next visit asks whether you want to continue instead of starting over.