iPhone App: Drop7

June 19th, 2009

= 5 stars

Puzzle game where the goal is to remove numbered discs from a grid before they fill the screen.

The Good

Simple rules create a surprising amount of complexity. A disc’s number indicates how many discs must be in its row or column for it to be removed from the board. Meaning, if you create a row with four discs, all the number fours in said row will vanish. The grid is 7 x 7 so the numbers run from 1 to 7. Adding to the challenge are grey discs, which hide their number until enough adjacent discs vanish. New discs appear from the top of the screen, Tetris-style, and you can choose which column to place them in, until they fill the screen, ending the game.
The game’s complexity emerges only revealed after many rounds of playing. It seems each number requires a different strategy. Ones are best used to wear down a grey disc immediately. Two twos will cancel each other out and disappear immediately, affecting the grey discs beneath. Low numbers become difficult to remove once they reach the top of the screen en masse. Therefore, different numbers are valuable depending on how many discs fill the screen. There are several goals at work in constant conflict, from wearing down the grey discs, placing numbers in particular spaces so you don’t eliminate future moves, trying to keep the screen from becoming filled, and anticipating “chain reactions” in which disappearing and falling discs cause other numbers to be removed. Yes, this is called: fun.
Three modes: normal, hardcore in which each level only has five moves, and sequence, where the numbers appear in the same order every time, but you’ll undoubtedly have different results.
Simple, minimalist graphics, bloopy sound effects, and relaxing background music.

The Bad

You’ll lose hours of productivity, colored dots will haunt your dreams in the middle of the night giving you the shakes, and you may well stubbornly play while crossing the street into moving traffic and be run over by a bus, whose driver will have little sympathy for your self-induced, digital slavery.

Conclusion

There are endless variations on the Tetris-inspired-falling-pieces game, or piece removal challenges like Bejeweled – but through a careful combination of rules, Drop7 is a real winner. I’m presently hooked, can’t put this game down, and would give it an extra star if I weren’t such a stickler for my rating system. If puzzle games are your thing, drop everything and download it now. Highly recommended.

iTunes App Store Link: