Rotate the falling pieces and arrange them into lines to clear them. To earn more money, arrange your pieces into 3x3, 3x4 and 3x5 boxes. The more of these boxes you make, the more money you'll get. See the later sections on Boxes for more details.

Another way to earn more money is to clear a lot of lines one after the other, which builds a combo. Making boxes also keeps your combo going. See the later section on Combos for more details.

Down lowers a piece, but can also squish pieces through obstructions in the playfield. See the later section on Squish Moves for more details.

• Left or Right moves your piece.
• Z or X rotates your piece.
• Down lowers your piece.
• Space, Up or Shift drops your piece immediately.

• Up, Down, Left or Right moves your character.
• Z talks to other characters.
• Tab brings up a level select.
• Shift rewinds dialog.

Esc quits the game.

Gamepads are also supported.

Rotate the falling pieces and arrange them into lines to clear them. To earn more money, arrange your pieces into 3x3, 3x4 and 3x5 boxes:

Other sizes of rectangles, such as a 4x4 or 3x6, will not turn into a box or award bonus points. Rectangles must include fully intact pieces, if a piece is involved in a line clear it can no longer be included in a box.

There are four ways to make snack boxes:

JJP LQQ OOV TUU
JPP LQQ OOV TTU
JPP LLQ VVV TUU

Snack boxes don't score as many points as cake boxes, but they're easy to make. This makes them useful for continuing combos.

Snack boxes always use two pieces of the same color, which makes them easy to spot in your next queue.

There are eight ways to make cake boxes:

JJJJ JJLL TTTT LLLL LLLT PPVVV UUPPV UUVVV
OOJJ JOOL JTTT LLOO LTTT PPQQV UPPPV UQQQV
OOJJ JOOL JJJT LLOO TTTT PQQQV UUVVV UUQQV

Cake boxes score a lot of points, especially if you arrange them horizontally. However because they require three pieces, they will disrupt your combo unless you plan for them.

The bag randomizer will give you each piece once plus a random piece (JLOPQTUV + ?). Four of these cake boxes can be completed with one bag of pieces (JLO, PQV, PUV, QUV). Four of these cake boxes require two bags of pieces, or good luck with the random piece (JJO, JTT, LLO, LTT).

All cake boxes use a J, L or V block. Pay close attention to the spacing of J, L or V blocks in the next queue to decide whether it's safe to start a cake box or not. Because of their versatility, you can always throw a J, L or V block against the wall and see what comes up later. For example, an L block against the left wall can be continued by an L, O, T or Q block.

L     lOO     looJ
L  -> lOO  -> looJ
LL    ll      llJJ
***   ***     **

L     lLLL    llll
L  -> lL   -> llOO
LL    ll      llOO
***   ***     ***

      TTT     ttt
L     lT      ltT 
L  -> l    -> lTT 
LL    ll      llT 
***   ***     ***

L     lQQ
L  -> lQQ
LL    llQ
***   ***

Clearing two or more lines sequentially forms a combo which scores you bonus points:

There are no special bonus points for clearing multiple lines at once, but each line counts towards your combo and awards bonus points in that way. For example, clearing 2 lines simultaneously and then 3 lines simultaneously earns you 20 bonus points, which is the same which you earn from clearing 5 lines sequentially (+0, +0, +5, +5, +10).

Every line clear increases your combo by one level. Building a snack box or cake box keeps your current combo level. Dropping two blocks consecutively without clearing a line or building a box resets your combo to zero.

The well is 9 pieces wide which provides exactly enough horizontal room for 3 boxes. By using squish moves effectively, you can create large vertical stacks of partially built boxes, and squish or slide moves to complete them.

Do not play the game horizontally! It is not Tetris.

Holding Down will attempt to pass a piece through obstructions in the playfield. This only works if at least one block in the current piece has a clear path to its new location.

Squish moves allow you to temporarily make gaps, and then fill them with pieces which would not normally have space. It's crucial for dealing with the awkward pieces of Turbo Fat.

You can tap Down when the piece is obstructed to perform a faster squish move. This allows for more timing-sensitive techniques, such as performing a squish and immediately sliding the piece into a nook.

OO    (squish!)
OO
 vvv     vvv    vvv
   v -> OO v -> OOv
   v    OO v    OOv
  **      **     **

Pressing Shift and Down at the same time will combine a hard drop and a squish move. The piece will plummet as low as it can go, passing through all other pieces in the way.

*T     * (squish
*TT    *  drop!)
*T     *
* qq   * qq
* qq   * qq
*  q   *  q
*  t   *  t
* tt   * tt
*  t   *  t
* uu   *Tuu
*  u   *TTu
* uu   *Tuu

Pieces can be rotated in tight spaces. This is helpful to make boxes or move pieces around the playfield. Here are a few, experiment to find more of your own.

 uuu    uuu
 u u    uPu
PPPv -> PPv
 PPv    PPv
 vvv    vvv

    **        **
 J   p       JJp
 JJJpp ->    Jpp
*** pp    ***Jpp

    **        **
   Lqq       Lqq
 LLLqq ->    Lqq
***  q    ***LLq

VVV        VVV
**Voo -> **Voo
**Voo    **Voo

If you're at the stage where you're just getting snack cakes, vertical cakes are a convenient way to double your box points. You can get two vertical cakes going side by side for +20 points. However, you can't stack on of incomplete vertical cakes without some advanced techniques.

To stack on top of a UPV cake, you want to build the UV pieces first, and squish the P piece in:

PPP   (squish!)
 PP     
 uuu     uuu    uuu
 u u     u u    uPu
   v -> PPPv -> PPv
   v     PPv    PPv
 vvv     vvv    vvv

To stack on top of a JLO cake, you want to build the JL pieces first, and squish-slide the O piece in:

 OO    (squish!)
 OO
  jjj      jjj    jjj
    j ->  OO j -> OOj
    l     OO l    OOl
  lll      lll    lll

Horizontal cake boxes are worth more points than vertical ones. A 5x3 cake box earns you 30 points per row which is more than any combination of vertical boxes. The unholy bifecta of a 5x3 cake alongside a 4x3 cake earns 50 points per row, but there's a special place for chefs perverse enough to attempt that, and it's not at the top of a leaderboard.

VPU and VQU boxes are great horizontal cake boxes. If you start with the V box pointy-side up, it can be built on top of anything, the next box in the stack can be started right away, and you can even drop the U out-of-order in rare circumstances. But in general, there are good ways to start horizontal cake boxes and bad ways.

Good PQV setup, starting with a V piece. This setup only requires two blocks to support the final piece, and provides three blocks of support to the box above it:

VVV    vvv     vvvQQ
V   -> vPP  -> vppQQ
V      vPPP    vpppQ
**     **      **

Bad PQV setup, starting with a V piece. This setup requires four blocks to support the final piece, and only provides a single block of support:

V      vQQQ    vqqqP
V   -> vQQ  -> vqqPP
VVV    vvv     vvvPP
****   ****    ****

Good LLO setup, starting with an L piece. This setup works even if there are only two blocks beneath the box, and allows additional boxes to be stacked above it:

  LL      ll    OOll
   L ->   Ll -> OOll
   L    LLLl    llll
  **      **      **

Bad LLO setup, starting with an O piece. This setup requires three blocks to support the final piece, and additional boxes cannot be stacked until the first L piece is added.

         LLL    Llll
  OO ->  Loo -> Lloo
  OO      oo    LLoo
 ***     ***     ***

Squish moves and spin moves help a lot, but there are some empty gaps which can't be filled no matter what. You should avoid making shapes like this.

***   ***
**    **
*  *  ** *
****  ****

The zigzag shape on the left can't be filled. The shape on the right can be filled with a U piece or L piece, it's not as bad.

* **  ****
* **  ****
* **  *
****  ****

There are no line pieces in Turbo Fat. Any wells deeper than two rows cannot be filled with any piece. The same is true for any horizontal holes more than 3 blocks deep.

***   ***
**    **
**    ** *
*  *  *  *
****  ****

Surprisingly, neither of these shapes is cursed, and both can be completed with a J piece. The left can be completed using a conventional spin move, while the right requires a special technique where you press Z and X simultaneously to flip a piece.

Press Z and X simultaneously to flip a piece. This can even be used in narrow corridors when the piece would normally be unable to rotate, or to perform unusual spin moves:

   ***       ***
  LL** ->    L**
 * L**     * L**
***L *    ***LL*

Holding Left or Right when a piece spawns will immediately spawn the piece on the left or right side of the playfield. The piece doesn't even move there, it just appears there, so you can do this if you're about to die or if there are blocks in the way.

Holding Z or X when a piece spawns will immediately rotate the piece. You can use this to keep from dying if the piece's normal orientation would cause a top out.

If you want to rotate a piece upside down, you can hold both Z and X when the piece spawns.

Holding Up or Shift when a piece spawns will immediately hard drop the piece. This can be combined with other buffered moves. For example, you might hold Up, Z X and Left to spawn the piece flipped on the left side of the playfield.

Pressing Up or Shift will plummet the piece to the bottom of the playfield and lock it into place. However, you can cancel it from locking or squish the piece further down by quickly pressing Down. To facilitate this, hard drop is bound to two keys. This way, you can press Shift to hard drop a piece, Down to unlock it, and Right to slide it over.

After you finish the game, you're graded in a few categories:

• Lines: How many lines you cleared, ignoring bonus points. Surviving longer gets you a better grade.
• Speed: How many lines you cleared per second, ignoring bonus points. Playing faster gets you a better grade.
• Boxes: How many bonus points you obtained per line from clearing boxes you made. Making lots of boxes gets you a better grade, especially having multiple boxes side-by-side or going for high-scoring cake boxes.
• Combos: How many bonus points you obtained per line from combos. Keeping your combo up by clearing lines and making boxes gets you a better grade.
• Time: Ultra mode grades you on your overall time, faster is better. Your other grades do not affect this overall grade.
• Score: Sprint and Marathon modes grade you on your overall score, higher is better. Your other grades do not affect this overall grade.