A Middle-Aged Dev’s Web Tetris: Zero Marketing, 2,000+ MAU in Six Months

JesseJun — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:59:07 +0000

Hi everyone, I’m Jesse, the developer of OnlineTetris. I built a browser-based Tetris with vanilla JS + HTML5 Canvas. I launched the first version at the end of April and then basically left it alone. A month later I noticed around twenty new players were playing every day—some even reported bugs. So I started fixing things and iterating. Now it’s at 2,000+ monthly active users across hundreds of cities. Here I’ll share my motivation, technical details, key features, how “zero marketing” played out, some data, and a few takeaways.

1. The Idea: Why Tetris?

One day in April this year I suddenly remembered the feeling of playing Tetris on a handheld as a kid: simple rules, instant feedback, and when you lose, you can instantly try again. I wanted a web version you can open and play anytime—a small tribute to that era.
I shipped the first version at the end of April. I didn’t plan any promotion or ongoing ops—just “ship it and park it.”

A month later I happened to check the numbers: roughly 20 players a day. Even more surprising, people were leaving comments on-site with lots of suggestions—gameplay, UI styling, etc. That’s when I realized some folks genuinely liked it. I began fixing bugs and iterating based on their feedback.

2. Technical Details: How I Built It

Frontend stack: HTML5 + vanilla JavaScript + Tailwind CSS. Keep it simple so I can maintain it solo.
Rendering: Canvas + requestAnimationFrame. I made some classic mistakes at first:
- Tying refresh rate too tightly to game logic, which caused high GPU usage and animation stutter;
- Overeager partial redraws—redrawing areas that didn’t need it;
- Browser/device differences (especially iGPUs) made edge cases more visible.
What I changed:
- Split the “logic layer” from the “rendering layer” to reduce wasted frames;
- Use minimal dirty-rectangle redraws whenever possible;
- Run animations on a lightweight, separate path to reduce interference;
- Added effects degradation for integrated graphics (e.g., lower animation frequency for some themes).
Backend:
- Supabase for the database.
- Each finished game round is stored and pushed to the leaderboard in real time.
- Aggregations for the leaderboard live in SQL views to avoid piling too much logic into the frontend.

3. Notable Features

① Global Leaderboard (Individual)

Ranking by each player’s personal high score to drive engagement and a sense of achievement.
Basic validation on submissions to reduce anomalous data.

② Global Leaderboard (Regional)

Aggregate scores by region to get a region’s total points, and rank regions globally.
I’m refining “bubble markers” on the map (zoom, hover for details).

③ Skin System

Pure “joy engineering”: wood, neon, retro, pixel, etc.
A real-world lesson: pretty ≠ high-perf. Some theme animations don’t love iGPUs, so I added toggles and graceful degradation.

4. “Marketing”: I Basically Didn’t Do Any

I’m not a marketing person and had no budget.
No ads or press at launch.
I only shared the link with a few friends—after that it spread organically.
Honestly, this forced me to spend time on the experience itself.

5. Six-Month Snapshot

It’s been about half a year since launch.
MAU: steady at 2,000+.
Geography: players from hundreds of cities worldwide.
Feeling: small in scale but real. Some people keep coming back.

6. Lessons Learned: Taught by Players

Treat players like friends. Every piece of feedback is product review help. If someone says animations stutter, I go record a performance flamegraph; if someone says lock-in feels off, I rework the “grounding delay” logic.
Experience first, even for tiny details. For instance, “Should there be a short movable window after a piece touches down?” dramatically affects feel.
Optimize for real hardware. Many users are on integrated graphics—don’t only build “soul-stirring” effects on high-end machines.

7. Updates & What’s Next

In progress:
- Further reducing GPU pressure for certain themes;
- Polishing map interactions for the regional leaderboard;
Planned:
- A fuller “City Championship” mode;
- Achievements/titles and light incentives.

Final Thoughts

This project began with nostalgia, survived on player feedback, and keeps rolling by getting the small things right.
If you’re also building a web mini-game, I’d love to chat about performance and game feel; if you’re just passing by as a player, please feel free to take it for a spin—complaints welcome.

Site: onlinetetris.org (Play a couple of rounds anytime. I’ll keep listening and polishing.)

DEV Community: JesseJun