Tetrominoes

Overview

Tetrominoes is a four-player block-stacking arcade game played on cabinets at the Xtreme99! Arcade in Hethereau. The activity is one of the entries in the Hethereau Hobbies panel inside the City Tycoon app and pays out Fons based on the player's finishing position. The basic rules will feel familiar to anyone who has played a falling-block puzzle game: shapes drop from the top of the play field, the player rotates and slots them to fill complete rows, and clearing rows sends garbage rows to the other players. The last person standing wins the round.

Inside the City Tycoon hobby roster, Tetrominoes sits alongside Mahjong as one of the two arcade-style table mini-games oriented around four-player matches. Both share the same low City Stamina cost band and the same focus on quick rounds, but Tetrominoes is the one that leans into reflex play and direct attacks against opponents, while Mahjong is the slower strategic option.

Where to Play

Tetrominoes cabinets are housed inside the Xtreme99! Arcade in Hethereau. The arcade is marked on the city map with the standard arcade icon, and the Tetrominoes machines are easy to recognize from the title screen on each cabinet. Some venues also distinguish the Tetrominoes seats with blue chairs to set them apart from other arcade cabinets in the same room.

Selecting Tetrominoes from the Hethereau Hobbies panel inside the City Tycoon app pins the venue's location to the map, so players do not have to memorize the arcade's address. Walking up to a cabinet and interacting with it opens the mode-select screen.

How to Unlock

Tetrominoes becomes available once the account reaches City Tycoon Level 8. The unlock shares its level gate with City Delivery, because both hobbies sit on the same mid-track tier of the City Tycoon menu. Reaching Level 8 typically requires a combined push across earlier hobbies and cafe income; the Level 8 milestone sits at roughly 1,146,000 Fons of lifetime earnings, alongside a Cafe Management Level 2 prerequisite from The Cafe by Origen and a House Comfort rating of around 20 inside the player's owned residence under the housing system.

Until those prerequisites are met, the cabinets remain visible at the arcade but cannot be queued. New accounts focused on a quick Tetrominoes unlock typically prioritize taxi shifts via Swift Travel, Sea Angler sessions, and early cafe income to push their City Tycoon level past the Level 8 line.

Game Modes

The mode-select screen offers two options. Each handles matchmaking and rewards differently, and which one a player picks should depend on whether the goal is practice or maximum payout.

Gameplay

Tetrominoes is a competitive falling-block puzzle. Each player has their own play field on screen. Shapes (the seven standard tetromino pieces) drop one at a time from the top of the field. The player rotates and shifts each shape into a slot before it locks in place. Filling a complete horizontal row clears that row and earns points; clearing two or more rows in the same drop, or stringing back-to-back clears, sends garbage rows to opponents. Garbage rows shrink the receiver's available play space and add a row of blocks with one gap each, which forces them to dig out before they can clear cleanly again.

The interface previews the next six pieces in the queue at the side of the play field, which lets players plan a few moves ahead instead of reacting to one piece at a time. There is no time limit on how long a piece can hover before locking, but the drop speed gradually increases as the round goes on, eating into the player's reaction window.

The losing condition is straightforward: a player is eliminated when their stack of blocks reaches the top of the play field. Once one seat tops out, the round continues for the remaining seats; the last player standing takes first place.

Controls

Inputs are mapped to both controller and keyboard layouts. The default bindings are listed below.

Hard drops are the single most important input to learn. A piece dropped instantly cannot be rotated again, so the player commits to its final position the moment they slam the button, but the speed payoff is large: hard drops let competent players clear lines several times faster than they could using only soft drops, which directly translates into more garbage rows pushed onto opponents.

Rewards

Tetrominoes pays out Fons at the end of every round. The amount depends on placement and on whether the table is solo or online.

Players who clear three opponents in an online match earn 7,000 Fons per round, which is the single highest per-match payout among the small arcade hobbies. Solo runs cap at 5,000 Fons per first-place clear, since the AI seats are not contesting the table.

City Stamina Cost

Tetrominoes consumes City Stamina on the standard hobby formula of one stamina point per 1,000 Fons earned. A first-place online win therefore burns 7 City Stamina, while a third-place finish online burns 5. Fourth place pays nothing and consumes nothing.

Because stamina is shared across every progression-granting activity, a player planning a Tetrominoes-heavy session should budget against the day's pool. Two clean first-place online runs use about 14 City Stamina, which is roughly the equivalent of two single-trip Swift Travel fares or two single City Delivery jobs. The cap that holds this pool scales upward with City Tycoon level, so players who stay on the tycoon track unlock larger daily Tetrominoes budgets over time.

Achievements

Three first-place achievements track lifetime Tetrominoes wins and pay out Annulith, the dice-roll currency used on the gacha board. The wins counter applies to either solo or online first-place finishes.

Annulith earned through Tetrominoes converts on the standard gacha board, so the achievement chain doubles as a slow trickle of pulls for any active character or weapon banner.

Comparison with Other Hobbies

Tetrominoes sits in the same low-stamina arcade tier as several other hobbies in the City Tycoon menu. The table below positions it against the other small-cost activities so players can decide where to place it in their daily rotation.

Solo NPC AFK Trick

The Solo mode of Tetrominoes can be turned into an effectively hands-free farm because the NPC opponents follow a fixed placement script. As soon as the round begins, every computer-controlled seat drops its pieces straight down the middle column of its own play field. The AI never spreads pieces sideways, never clears a row, and never sends garbage to the player, so the three NPC stacks climb at a roughly steady rate until each seat tops out one after the other. The player only has to stay alive longer than the slowest NPC to take first place.

How to Set up the Win

• Open the Tetrominoes cabinet at the Xtreme99! Arcade and pick the Solo mode from the mode-select screen. Do not pick Multi for this trick. The Multi queue uses real human opponents, who do not stack in a single column and will punish an idle player.

• When the first piece spawns, slide it to one side of the play field instead of leaving it in the center. Either edge works, as long as the piece is clear of the middle column where the NPC stacks will rise.

• Let the rest of the round play itself. Subsequent pieces will land on top of the first one near the edge and slowly build a tilted stack, but the NPCs will hit their own ceiling first. Once each NPC seat tops out, the round ends and the player banks the Solo first-place payout.

• Community testing places the full round at roughly 90 seconds from press to payout, which fits naturally as a short AFK window between other tasks. Times can vary slightly depending on how quickly the NPCs reach their cap, so treat the 90-second figure as a community-reported estimate rather than a fixed timer.

Why This Works

The Solo seats are filled by the same idle AI seats described in the Game Modes section. Those seats do not actively try to win; their drop logic is centered, slow, and never recovers from a stack ceiling. Because there is no garbage incoming, the player's stack only grows at the speed of their own placements, so a single piece moved to the side is enough to keep the player alive past the AI's loss point. The player does not need to clear a single line to take first place.

Stamina and Reward Notes

• The AFK round still spends City Stamina in line with the standard hobby formula, since payout drives the cost. A Solo first-place finish pays 5,000 Fons, so each successful AFK round burns about 5 stamina from the daily pool.

• Solo first-place wins still count toward the lifetime first-place achievements, so the same farm chips toward the 1, 10, and 30-win Annulith milestones over time.

• Because the round is short and predictable, this farm pairs cleanly with other low-effort idle runs. Players who want a slower, longer hands-off session can chain Tetrominoes Solo with auto-played Mahjong sessions, while those willing to click a few times per minute can rotate through Owner's Selection to drain stamina faster.

When Not to AFK

The AFK trick only applies to Solo mode. Multiplayer matchmaking pairs the table with up to three real human players, which is the mode where Tetrominoes is intended to be played and where the higher 7,000 Fons first-place payout lives. Idling in Multi will not produce a guaranteed win because human opponents stack across the field, push back garbage rows, and finish their own rounds at varied speeds. Auto-playing in Multi also wastes the time of the other three players at the table, who queued in expecting an actual match. Players chasing a real challenge or the higher payout should pick Multi and play the round normally; the AFK approach is for Solo only.

Tips and Strategies

• Master the hard drop before anything else. The instant-placement input is what separates a fast Tetrominoes player from a slow one, and the speed advantage compounds over a full round.

• Build flat, leave one column open. The classic falling-block strategy applies here: stack pieces evenly across the field and reserve a single column for the long four-row clear, which sends the largest single garbage payload to opponents.

• Use the six-piece preview. The queue on the side of the play field shows the next six pieces, so a player can plan two or three pieces ahead instead of reacting to whatever drops next.

• Watch the opponents' fields. Garbage rows take a moment to arrive; if an opponent is about to clear a four-row stack, expect a heavy load incoming and dig defensively before pushing for an attack of your own.

• Solo mode is for practice. The AI seats do not contest the round, so a Solo first-place finish is mostly a guaranteed payout for the daily stamina spend rather than a competitive result. Move to Multi as soon as the controls feel comfortable.

• Plan around the Annulith milestones. The 1, 10, and 30 first-place achievements each pay Annulith, so even casual sessions chip toward gacha pulls if the player tracks first-place wins specifically.

• Pair Tetrominoes with Mahjong runs in the same arcade trip. Both hobbies share the low City Stamina tier and live in the same district, so a single visit can clear several hobby checkpoints at once.

Related Pages

• Hethereau Hobbies - Umbrella guide to every leisure activity in the city.

• Mahjong - The other four-seat arcade hobby that Tetrominoes is most often compared with.

• City Tycoon - The progression track that gates the Tetrominoes unlock at Level 8.

• Fons - The city currency Tetrominoes pays out.

• City Stamina - The shared daily pool that Tetrominoes draws from.

• Side Activities and Mini-Games - The full hobby roster index.