Drop7 iPhone game – A lot like crack, a lot less expensive

If you’re a fan of connect’em type of puzzle games like Bejeweled and Trism, you will absolutely love Drop7 a little-known iPhone game that deserves a lot more attention.

Drop7 quietly appeared in the App Store this week. We were fortunate enough to discover it because we were already familiar with Chain Factor, the addictive Flash game upon which Drop7 is based. The iPhone version offers the very same gameplay along with some different modes of play not available in the Flash version.

We really can’t recommend this game enough. It offers a fantastic twist on the connect’em game genre that makes the gameplay highly engaging with almost limitless re-playability. If you like puzzle games, you will definitely want to download Drop7 for iPhone or iPod touch.

About Drop7

Drop7 actually showed up in the App Store for the first time back in December, but it disappeared quickly afterward. The iPhone game was named Chain Factor, the same name of the Flash game developed by Manhattan game developers, Area/Code Entertainment. The Flash version of this game was developed in partnership with CBS to promote the television drama, Numb3rs. We suspect that it was pulled from the App Store because of naming rights issues because the same game has now reappeared in the App Store sporting a new name, Drop7. Lucky for us.

Gameplay

Playing Drop7 is a bit different than most connect’em games in that you don’t try to combine similar items. Instead, whenever the number on a disc matches the size of the row or column that disc is in, it will disappear. After a couple of minutes of playing you’ll get the hang of it and don’t worry, there’s precious little mathematics that your brain has to worry about. It’s more about patterns than it is about math, which makes the game fun for almost all ages.

Grouping numbers together to remove discs, then chaining the groups for multiple removals is the key to high scoring here. Obstacles appear in the form of grey discs which are really number discs beneath. You have to break these grey discs open to reveal their number so you can then group and remove them like any other number disc. There’s no time limit in Drop7 so you won’t have that frenetic beat-the-clock pressure found in similar games. Just take the time you need to set up your strategy in the best possible way. Drop7 moves as fast, or as slow as you desire.

There are moments during gameplay that give us the feeling that we can see numbers way off in the distance, the way they connect and disappear, much like the guy from that movie A Beautiful Mind. We’re dropping numbers and decoding multiple chains to drive our scores higher and higher. Then that feeling quickly passes and we chalk our brilliance up to just dumb luck. There is strategy, mind you, and plenty of it. Although, we do find it difficult to look ahead at more than just a couple of chains at a time. But maybe that’s just us; the byproduct of spending too much time reading Mad Magazine instead of MIT’s Technology Review.

Warning: Very Addictive!

Be forewarned, though, that as you play it more and more, you will start to form your own strategies and that’s when the serious addiction sets in. How addictive is Drop7? Did you see that guy fiddling with his iPhone behind Obama during the inauguration? Well, let us just say that if he was playing Drop7, then we fully understand why. This is one tough game to put down.

To download Drop7 you’ll need to drop a buck on it in the App Store. However, if you’re on the fence about buying it, go try it out the Flash game, Chain Factor. You’ll need to use a web browser because the iPhone doesn’t have Flash. Also, be sure to read the rules before starting, it really does help. If you like the Flash version, then go ahead and buy Drop7 in the App Store so you can take it with you on your iPhone or iPod touch.

• Drop7 – $0.99 [app store]

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