Design and implement core Tetris game logic

Q: Design and implement core Tetris game logic

This question evaluates practical implementation skills in game logic, real-time state and event management, piece rotation and movement handling, line-clearing algorithms, and clean, testable code organization.

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Software Engineering Fundamentals questions require understanding of core concepts and practice. PracHub provides solutions with explanations to help you master software engineering fundamentals interviews.

Q: What difficulty level is this interview question?

This is a medium difficulty Software Engineering Fundamentals question, commonly asked during Onsite rounds at Liftoff.

Q: What role is this question designed for?

This question is commonly asked for Software Engineer candidates at Liftoff during technical interviews.

Question

Implement the core logic of the Tetris game in a way that can run in a terminal (no graphical UI required).

Requirements:

Board/grid: standard size width = 10 , height = 20 .
Pieces: the 7 tetrominoes I, O, T, S, Z, J, L .
Support piece rotation, left/right movement, soft drop, hard drop.
Gravity: the active piece moves down periodically; when it can’t move down, it locks into the board.
Line clears: when a row is full, remove it and shift rows above down.
End condition: game over when a new piece cannot be spawned.

Deliverable:

A cleanly structured implementation with a simple terminal loop (text rendering is fine) or an API that a terminal loop can call.
Emphasis on correctness and code organization (testability), not fancy UI.

Clarifications you may decide and document:

Rotation system (e.g., simple wall kicks vs none)
Scoring rules (can be simplified)
Random piece generation (e.g., 7-bag vs uniform random)

Design and implement core Tetris game logic

Quick Overview

Design and implement core Tetris game logic

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