Here’s my latest addicton, taking over where Trism left off. It’s Drop7, and it’s just wonderful.
The rules are very simple: drop the numbered discs into the grid. If the number on the disc matches the number of discs in that column or row, that disc will vanish and you’ll earn points. Hidden discs are revealed by making their neighbours vanish. It sounds simplistic but it soon gets fiendishly challengng, especially as extra rows of hidden discs appear whenever you move up a level.
But the main thing I’ve noticed about Drop7 is the way other people react to it.
A week or so ago, I went to donate blood in our town hall. Donors are asked to sit and relax for 20 minutes or so after their blood’s been taken, so they are served tea and biscuits by a team of volunteers, most of them retired ladies.
As I sat and drank my tea and munched my biscuits, I played Drop7. I was vaguely aware that one of the tea ladies was hovering over my shoulder, but too engrossed in the game to look up. Game over and tea drunk, I stood and she immediately appeared to clear my mug away.
“That game you were playing,” she said. “What was it?”
“It’s called Drop7,” I replied.
“It looks fantastic,” she said. “A bit like Tetris.”
“Well, it is. A bit. It’s a good logic game.”
“I shall have to look out for that,” she said with a smile.
“You’ll need one of these to play it on,” I said, waving my iPhone in the air.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve got one. Well, an iPod Touch. It’ll work on that won’t it?”
Only slightly taken aback that a woman in her 70s should be addicted to games on the iPod Touch, I nodded and left.
Another example: this evening, my wife casually asked what was new on my phone. I showed her Ancient Frog.
“Not my kind of thing,” she said dismissively. “Anything else?”
“I think you’ll like this,” I answered, and started Drop7.
“I won’t,” she said. “I know what I like, and I like Wurdle.”
“Yes but this is all about logic. You’re good at that,” I said. I showed her the basics, then passed the phone to her.
That was about two hours ago. She’s been playing Drop7 non-stop ever since, has already taken a decent bite out of the high scores table, and if it weren’t for a failing battery would probably keep going for hours more.
So there you go. Drop7. It rocks.
