Install bastet with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• bastet

Project history

Bastet's first public release was version 0.37, according to the official page. The algorithm notes say 0.37 used a hand-written analysis of the top border of the well and usually selected the worst-scoring piece while sometimes choosing among near-worst pieces to avoid boring repetition.

Version 0.41 replaced that heuristic with a scoring function over possible well states. Version 0.43 was a complete rewrite, no longer based on Petris, and used a search over legal block positions plus separate normal and harder algorithms depending on whether the next-piece preview was shown.

Adoption history

The official page says Bastet was discussed on Slashdot in April 2005 and in the xkcd forum in 2010, both as part of its reputation as an intentionally unfair Tetris variant. It also states that Bastet is included in most distributions and gives apt, snap, yum, and dnf installation examples.

The supplied package facts show modern packaging in Homebrew, Debian, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, and Ubuntu, which matches the official site's claim that distro package managers are the normal way to install it.

How it is used

The README describes a simple menu-driven ncurses game with configurable keys, defaults for movement/rotation/drop, pause, and control-C quit. The game has normal and harder block choosers; the harder mode removes the next-block preview.

The algorithm page documents the adversarial selection policy for 0.43: it evaluates legal placements and chooses the worst block most of the time, with smaller probabilities for the second-, third-, and fourth-worst blocks.

Why package nerds care

Bastet is package-nerd significant because it is a tiny terminal game that became widely packaged due to one memorable mechanic. It is the sort of ncurses oddity that makes Unix package catalogs feel like cultural archives as much as software indexes.

It also preserves a lineage of small C++ terminal games, distro-maintained builds, desktop metadata, and ports/patches for macOS and Windows/PDCurses.

Timeline

• Version 0.37: First public release, with the original top-border heuristic.
• 2005-04: Official page records a Slashdot article about Bastet 0.41.
• Version 0.41: New block-choosing algorithm based on scoring possible well states.
• 2009: Version 0.43 is a complete rewrite and no longer based on Petris.
• 2010: Official page records discussion in the xkcd forum.
• 2014: Version 0.43.1 adds updates for package-manager convenience, including desktop and appdata files.
• 2020-04-28: Official page states Bastet is old work with no new versions planned, but not abandoned.

Related projects

• The official page says 0.43 was no longer based on Petris, implying earlier lineage from that project. It also notes Abandoned Bricks, an SDL Tetris clone with a Bastard mode based on Bastet.

Sources

• https://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html
• https://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastetalgo.html
• https://github.com/fph/bastet/blob/master/README
• source_facts.package-manager