Tessera
Public
Pull mirror status: ok
D
Link the README's itch.io mentions to the live store page
assets
docs
libs
src
tests
.editorconfig
.gitattributes
.gitignore
BACKLOG.md
LICENSE.txt
README.md
Tessera.slnx
Tessera.vcxproj
Tessera.vcxproj.filters
TesseraTests.vcxproj
TesseraTests.vcxproj.filters

Tessera

A styled falling-block puzzle game — C++23 / SFML 3.1, hand-built engine, no game framework.

▶ Play on itch.io  ·  Latest release  ·  Full playthrough

What it is

Classic falling-block puzzle, rebuilt from scratch with a hand-written engine: a proper 7-bag randomizer, standard SRS rotation and wall kicks, T-spins, combos, back-to-back, Perfect Clear — and one continuous endless mode that quietly ramps up the longer you survive. Stick around past the two-minute mark and the board starts throwing Speed Surges, rising garbage and a rare golden piece that doubles whatever you clear with it. Chase a spot on the local top-10 board.


Main menu
Gameplay

Options
Pause menu


▶️ Watch the full playthrough

Download & play

  1. Download Tessera-vX.Y.Z-win64.zip
  2. Extract it anywhere
  3. Run Tessera.exe — the SFML DLLs are bundled next to it

Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit. A gamepad is optional; Xbox and PlayStation (DualSense / DualShock) layouts are built in and switched to automatically.

Features

Gameplay

  • Standard 10×20 board with a 20-row hidden buffer above it, for tall spins and legal spawns
  • Guideline 7-bag randomizer, toggleable to pure random
  • Standard SRS rotation and wall kicks; piece shapes and kick tables are data-driven from assets/data/, not hardcoded
  • Ghost piece, hold piece, and a next-queue preview with a configurable depth (1–5 pieces)
  • Full T-spin detection (regular and mini), combos, back-to-back, and a Perfect Clear bonus
  • One continuous endless mode that escalates over time — see Escalation for the exact tiers and timings
  • A local top-10 leaderboard, per-run name entry

Presentation

  • Neon glow shaders on the active piece, menu titles and UI
  • Toggleable CRT post-processing filter
  • Screen shake, row-clear flash / sweep / shatter, a T-spin burst, a board-wide Perfect Clear flourish, particle dust on landings and wall hits
  • A fully animated main menu — drifting tetromino backdrop, aurora, a letter-by-letter title drop-in

Options

  • Graphics — resolution, Fullscreen / Windowed / Borderless, V-Sync, FPS counter, CRT filter toggle
  • Audio — music and sound effect volume
  • Gameplay — gamepad vibration and lightbar, screen shake, ghost piece, hold piece, next-queue length, 7-bag toggle
  • HUD — independent visibility for every panel (Hold, Next, Score, Lines, Level, Time, controls legend)
  • Controls — full keyboard rebinding
  • Language — English, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian

Full breakdown: docs/GAMEPLAY.md

Controls

ActionKeyboardGamepad
Move left / right← →D-pad / Left stick
Soft drop↓D-pad / Left stick (down)
Hard dropSpaceA / Cross
Rotate clockwiseERight bumper
Rotate counter-clockwiseQLeft bumper
HoldCY / Triangle
PauseEscMenu button
MenusArrows, mouse, Enter, EscD-pad, ✕ / A confirm, ○ / B back

All keyboard bindings can be reassigned in Options → Controls. Full layouts, including DualSense rumble / lightbar / adaptive triggers: docs/CONTROLS.md

Save data

The game writes per-player data to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Alone Bull Company\Tessera\
FileContents
settings.jsongraphics, audio, control bindings, gameplay, HUD and language settings
scores.jsonthe local top-10 leaderboard

If %LOCALAPPDATA% is unavailable, the game falls back to a user_data\ folder next to the executable. Writes are atomic, and a file that fails to parse is quarantined as <name>.corrupt rather than overwritten.

Building from source

Requires Visual Studio 2026 (toolset v145), the Windows 10 SDK, and SFML 3.1.0 (64-bit). The project is a plain .vcxproj — no CMake or vcpkg.

  1. Build SFML 3.1.0 and drop its include/ and lib/ into libs/SFML/ — see libs/SFML/README.md
  2. Open Tessera.slnx
  3. Build x64 / Release (or Debug) — output goes to bin/Release/ (bin/Debug/ for Debug); the SFML DLLs are copied next to the executable automatically as a post-build step
  4. Run the game

Prebuilt binaries are on the Releases page.

Tests

Unit tests live in a separate project, TesseraTests, in the same solution. It builds a small console runner that links the game's pure-logic code (Board, Tetromino, TetrominoBag, KickData, PieceData, TSpinRule, GameplaySession, EscalationDirector) against doctest — no window, no SFML runtime.

  • In Visual Studio: set TesseraTests as the startup project and run it.

  • From the command line:

    MSBuild TesseraTests.vcxproj -p:Configuration=Debug -p:Platform=x64
bin\Tests\Debug\TesseraTests.exe

    The runner exits non-zero if any test fails.

Architecture

Hand-rolled state machine over an SFML render loop — no engine. A StateMachine pushes/pops screens (ScreenHost-hosted menus, the gameplay state, loading, game over); gameplay is a pure, headless GameplaySession simulation driven entirely by input events, with a dedicated rendering/ layer and an EscalationDirector that owns the endless-mode difficulty curve.

Full write-up: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md · design patterns used, mapped to the code: docs/PATTERNS.md

src/        game source code
tests/      unit tests (TesseraTests project)
assets/     textures, shaders, audio (music + sounds), fonts, JSON data
libs/       external libraries (SFML; DualSenseWindows and nlohmann/json, vendored)

Tech

C++23 · SFML 3.1.0 · DualSenseWindows · nlohmann/json · MSBuild / Visual Studio 2026

Author

Demian Blogan — demianblogan@gmail.com

Licensed under the MIT License.