did i mention this game rocks? it rocks. go get the demo and play it now. it rocks so much

in this game as with mahjong, a hand gains value by containing yaku which can be considered win conditions. generally speaking you need at least one yaku to finish a hand properly. yaku also confer different levels of value onto your hand based on how difficult they are to complete. in a comment on one of my other posts @lys commented that it's not easy to know what all of the valid yaku are, which unless you can read japanese is unfortunately true as this game is not localized. so let's go over all of them, what they're good for, and what they're worth. the game classes yaku into five categories so we'll go over each in turn

connect type

in general yaku in this category of yaku are earned by putting a bunch of tetrominoes that share some quality touching each other. there are two sub-categories to this one: shape and color

you earn connect shape by putting together at least three tetrominoes of the same shape. keep in mind that this game only considers the free tetrominoes: unlike in tetris, L and J are considered the same shape, as are S and Z. this yaku is typically either going to be a cheap, fast yaku for going out early, or higher grades will possibly come along for the ride if you make some bonkers yakuman. along those lines it is useful because it can be improved repeatedly by making one extra piece, giving you many opportunities to finish your hand normally and not take the 50% score penalty for getting caught looking. it also shows up as a free bonus when you make same square-4 which will be covered later.

connect color is similar but the tetrominoes can be of any shape as long as they're the same color. it is usually slower but also worth more than connect shape, capping out as tied for the most valuable single yaku in the game. it is hard to cap out because of how many pieces you would need of a single color, but the lower grades of it usually show up automatically when you play for straight-type yaku which we will also go over later.

it is worth noting that yaku in this group will stack: for example, you can earn connect shape-3 multiple times if there are multiple discrete groups of 3 shapes on your board and so on as long as those those groups aren't of the same shape (same applies to color). so it's almost always valid to have a group open that you can add to

there are many of these so here's a nice table of han values

yaku type	han (value)
connect shape-3	1.0
connect shape-4	1.5
connect shape-5	2.0
connect shape-6	2.5
connect shape-7	3.0
connect shape-8	3.5
connect shape-9	4.0
connect color-3	1.5
connect color-4	2.5
connect color-5	3.5
connect color-6	5.0

all type

these yaku come from making one of each of a particular trait. so again there are two sub-categories though there are a lot fewer

you score all shapes by making at least one of each shape. note that as mentioned earlier there are five distinct shapes and you don't have to make both L and J or both S and Z. this means there is only room for one extension, all shapes-2, as the hypothetical all shapes-3 would require 15 tetrominoes which takes more space than exists on the board. these yaku are very interesting because they are pretty powerful but see vastly different uses which we'll go over

all color means you made at least one of each color. you will almost always score this yaku without trying and it is worth 1 han. this can be further extended to all color-2 and all color-3 by making 2 or 3 of each color respectively

yaku type	han (value)
all shapes	3.0
all shapes-2	5.0
all color	1.0
all color-2	2.0
all color-3	3.0 (7.0)

for the all shapes series you may notice that they seem powerful! they are, with all shapes-2 also being tied for the most powerful single yaku in the game. but honestly i have not seen a ton of use for it because it doesn't play nice with many other yaku and is still relatively slow... on the other hand the regular all shapes is 3 han for 5 pieces which is extremely efficient. if you get a starting board with 3 different shapes on it already, it is very much valid to rush this hand out and your opponent will likely have a hard time beating it

also, what's up with all colors-3? it says it's worth 3 han, but your hand will always be worth at least 7 han... because there are 4 colors, you need 3 of each, that's 12 tetrominoes, and 12 tetrominoes will tile the board, meaning you are also guaranteed to score spread (4 han) which will be fully explained later. i've scored all colors-3 a handful of times by accident but usually it's not something you go for explicitly because your hand will likely already be yakuman without it. all colors is hard to rush with by itself because it's so dead easy to make that it probably only wins if you manage to catch the opponent with their pants down otherwise they will certainly beat all colors nomi etc. i basically treat this particular yaku like a dora. all colors-2 will typically come around late into a big hand and might provide you an early out if you need it, and is usually good for some extra points, so it comes up a lot

straight type

there are two flavors of this yaku: horizontal straight (typically shortened to H straight) and vertical straight (typically shortened to V straight). they involve making a line across your board consisting of only a single color. note that all of the involved squares must be part of tetrominoes, so unconverted pieces do not count!

H straight is worth 3 han, and V straight is worth 2 han. this may seem counterintuitive as V straight requires more pieces but H straight requires you to play around piece dependencies where you can kinda just stack up to make V straight. that being said it is slightly more likely that vertical straight hands will also involve connect color-3 so in practice it's probably around the same.

H straight is additionally potentially useful for making a semi-early play on a board start that has a horizontal I tetromino in it already. in fact fishing a high value hand out of the center 3x4 block start usually requires it

it is possible to score both types of straight in a single hand, but these yaku do not stack with themselves: making two or more straights of the same type will not score the corresponding yaku multiple times. be careful!

square type

these involve fitting your tetrominoes into larger square shapes. there are three yaku in this category.

the two square-4 yaku are granted when you build a 4x4 square out of 4 pieces. many large hand builds will use one or both of these somewhere. the base square-4 yaku is 2 han and means you didn't build it with 4 of the same tetromino shape. if you use 4 of the same shape, then you will instead score same square-4 which is 2.5 han but comes with a guaranteed connect shape-4 which really makes it 4 han at a minimum

if you played the new tetris for N64, square-4 is a silver square, and same square-4 is a gold square.

additionally if you can pack 9 tetrominoes into a 6x6 square you will earn square-9, which is worth 4 han. this is a very useful large hand yaku. the hand that i typically want to build towards, and will go for in the absence of any rush strats for a given opener, will attempt to make this yaku (in addition to half spread and a few other things... honestly it looks a lot like the example above).

like the straight type yaku you can score each of these exactly once. if you want to score both square-4 and same square-4 it is possible but they have to be on different areas of the board. however those areas can overlap! for example if you have a 4x4 square made of O pieces and then two parallel I pieces adjacent to it, that will score both yaku: the four Os will combine for same square-4 and additionally two Os and two Is will make square-4. it's a neat trick and if you are so lucky to build this in the bottom half of the board you can make sanbaiman level hands with like six tetrominoes. it's crazy

spread type

you may have noticed the line bisecting the field horizontally... that's where these yaku come in, or in particular half spread, which is a 1.5 han yaku you get for tiling one of those halves. since it's a 6x4 area you need 6 tetrominoes to do it, so it's not actually that big of a deal on its own, but it provides extra value and usually lets you simplify building your hand's upper structure significantly so i recommend picking it up along the way if you're not rushing.

spread (also sometimes called full spread by the yuyu community for clarity) is what you get when you tile the entire board, and it's worth 4 han. this requires 12 pieces. if you do complete this you are probably about to hit someone with a yakuman unless you really managed to avoid other yaku and/or discarded like a crazy person to get there

as with straights and squares you can pick each of these up once: tiling each 6x4 half of the board will earn you both yaku, but you will not score half spread twice. it is actually possible to score half spread for tiling any 6x4 area but honestly how did you even manage that (i knew you could get it off top half only but @kaito-sinclaire was the sicko who managed to pull off a mid board half spread to confirm it)

scoring

ok so we talked a lot about yaku and han, but han aren't points, so how do i translate han into points?

there are two parts to your score, and one is han as we discussed before. the total han for your hand are presented underneath the list of yaku you have achieved. square this, multiply by 150, and you get that many points. additionally you get some points just for making tetrominoes. since we're borrowing so heavily from mahjong i will call this value fu (in english you may have seen the equivalent minipoints). as far as i can tell it is usually 1000 points per tetromino (so up to 9K on the standard settings). some characters calculate fu differently; for example tart (the cat) gets bonus fu for making two tetrominoes at once.

additionally there is a discard penalty of 250 points per discard. discarding is when a piece is placed off the top of the screen. it disappears, but you take a point penalty for it... but honestly most big hands will do a bunch of these so don't be too scared to do it. (and yes it is per individual square so if you discard an entire domino you will take a 500 point penalty)

and of course the maximum hand value is 25000 unless you play as gabu. this is the game's equivalent of yakuman even if it's not actually directly related to number of han. typically you will reach this value at around 11.5 han though.

final score = min(25000, fu + (150 * han²) - (250 * num_discards))

note that this does mean you can beat a hand that has more han even if your opponent doesn't take the penalty for not finishing properly! typically this will happen if you have a lot more tetrominoes even if they don't contribute to any yaku, or if your opponent discarded a lot. so it is sometimes worth making random extra tetrominoes if you are cycling for a particular piece to finish your hand off

a note on terms for hand sizes

i overload mahjong terms a lot here so when i refer to hand sizes i will also borrow relevant terms from mahjong even if it's a little wrong:

• blue attacks (6,000~9,999) are mangan
• green attacks (10,000~14,999) are haneman
• yellow attacks (15,000~19,999) are baiman
• red attacks (20,000~24,999) are sanbaiman
• purple attacks (25,000) are yakuman

is the fact that it's wrong going to stop me? absolutely the fuck not

12K+ hands will give you a full screen cut-in, which is cute

fin

ok now you know all your yaku. time to fuck shit up in the dream factory! maybe i'll see you in queue... (or you can just ask me for matches i guess???)

one of the things that makes this game fascinating is the sheer convergence of factors. you need to think about these "hands" as part of the overall pattern while carefully considering where to drop each individual bubble while looking ahead at the next three drops to determine what you're going to do next. The supply of bubbles is limited and it's very easy to position one in a situation where you can never match it, so if you start going on auto-pilot and just matching colors with your lizard brain you will lose.

it's a game for brain gods is what i'm saying

the thing with yumeiro yuram is that it has exactly one interaction mechanic that is used exactly once per round and despite this it's one of the most screen watch heavy games i've ever played. honestly despite its insane mix of inspirations it manages to be extremely elegant in its design. i will be posting about how to build hands and play The Footsies at some point soon. thank @mojilove for that

i would like to contest that it is for brain gods as i am very stupid though

if you want matches there's always puzzle wednesday or you can find my discord where i'll probably be posting (rodrick or ratttz do not read this) experimentation