Block stacker
Jstris
Modern stacking rules, a stopwatch and no adverts. The purest skill cabinet on the floor, and the least forgiving of a phone.
- Made by
- jezevec10
- Released
- Online since December 2014
- Shelf
- Platform · 2–5 minutes
- One session
- A 40-line sprint takes one to three minutes
- Account
- Account optional
- Connection
- Forgiving if the connection stutters
- Controls
- Keyboard, fully remappable
- Pays its way with
- Optional supporter tier, $3–$5 a month
- Last retested
- 22 September 2026
Opens the developer's own site in a new tab. The link is editorial: nobody paid for it, and we get nothing if you click it.
- To start
- £0, nothing to install
- Most it will sell you
- Optional supporter tier, $3–$5 a month
- Paid random items
- None
Every price, with its source: what each cabinet really costs.
The first five minutes
Pick Sprint, press a key, and forty lines appear as a target. The hold slot, the five-piece preview and the wall kicks are all where a modern player expects them, so if you have stacked before you are immediately at home — and if you have not, your first time will be around four minutes and your fifth under three.
Built for people who measure things
The modes are all stopwatches in disguise: Sprint over 20, 40, 100 or 1000 lines; Cheese Race, where you dig through a set number of garbage rows; Ultra for score inside a time limit; Survival; and Live rooms where clearing lines sends garbage to everyone else.
It has been running since December 2014 under one developer, it is free of advertising, and the leaderboards are actively policed. The optional supporter tier buys extra block skins and nothing that affects a run.
Why it sits on the short shelf
A sprint is the neatest unit of play on this whole site: press start, forty lines later you have a number, and the number is comparable with your last one. Nothing is lost if you abandon a run, because the run was the point.
Single-player modes lean on your own machine, so a hiccup in the connection is survivable — the live rooms obviously are not. That combination makes it a decent platform game and a poor tunnel game.
The one place it will not go
This is a keyboard cabinet. Rotation, hold and soft drop want fingers on keys, and no amount of goodwill makes that work one-handed on a phone. It is the lowest thumb score on the floor and we have marked it accordingly.
If you want stacking on a phone, this is not the entry to open — take Hextris for the same shape of pleasure in a form that fits your hand.
What works
- No advertising anywhere, and guest play needs nothing from you
- Modern rules done properly: hold, five-piece preview, wall kicks
- Every mode is timed, so improvement is visible run to run
- Single-player runs are not ruined by a wobbly connection
What grates
- Keyboard only in practice — a phone is the wrong machine for it
- Live rooms drop you if the connection goes
- The interface is functional rather than beautiful; it is built for players, not screenshots
The verdict
If you like being measured, this is the best cabinet here: free, clean, quick and honest about what a run is worth. It only falls down the table because half of our marking sheet is about playing away from a desk.
Questions we get asked
Do I need an account to play Jstris?
No. Guest play works from the front page; an account only saves your records and puts you on the leaderboards.
Does Jstris have adverts?
No. It is funded by an optional supporter tier that unlocks extra block skins.
How long is a sprint?
A 40-line sprint takes most people between one and three minutes, which makes it the ideal thing to fit into a short wait.