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jp's Dropcast (DS)

[June 5, 2021 02:47:10 PM]

I love the art and the special "shiny" effect on the cover was also a draw. But, I haven't been able to get the hang of the game - I can clear levels and win matches now and then but I don't get the overall sense of what skill I should be developing as I play this game. It seems more random than I'd like. At most the strategy seems to be: wait until you have lots of matches to activate and then fire them all together. This is a bit of a shame because there's a sense that there's more to it than just that. For example - you can unlock different characters and they have different "abilities" or "effects" associated to when you make a match based on the shape inside the object. So, there's matches you may want to save because they act as "counters" to enemy attacks.

But, the matching? Well, there's no swapping - you merely tap on screen when there are more than "x" shapes adjacent to each other and go from there. Curiously the screen fills up from the bottom - you always get a new row - so there are limits to what you can do "tactically" to try to set up new "big" matches.

There is a special mode that's interesting - but wasn't that fun for me - it uses both screens although you only play on the touch screen you need to pay attention to the other one. Oh, you also hold the DS on its side - like a book! (I hope someone's written about this, because this is not the only game that does this and I think it's a cool result/affordance of the DS form factor you don't really see in other handheld devices)

Anyways, on the touchscreen you make matches that result in blocks being sent to the other screen following certain shapes. Now, WHERE you tap for the match to happen determines where the blocks will drop on the other screen and your goal is to make "rows" (like Tetris) and to avoid stuff reaching the top. Like in the "regular" game - there are limits to what you can actually do tactically, but it's a neat idea and I enjoyed playing a few times before I felt there wasn't that much more to do...