Review: Droplitz
Posted by Chubiggans on November 25th, 2009 | 0 Comments | Tags: PS3
Developer: Blitz Arcade
Release Date: June 24th, 2009
Price: $9.99
Demo: No
Players: 1
What I liked:
- Great original gameplay that captures the essence of what frantic puzzle-solving gameplay is all about.
- Easy to learn, but difficult to master.
- Fun trophies to go after.
- Nice amount of stat-tracking info.
What I disliked:
- The game reaches a point far into a round where it becomes impossible to continue any further.
- Music is fairly good, but the skins are bland.
- No custom soundtrack option.
Droplitz has the good ol’ formula of being pretty easy to learn, but difficult (yet rewarding) to master. As drops fall down from the top of the level, you must twist pipes around to connect a line to the bottom of the level where drops are safely deposited. Once all the drops run out, the connecting pipes are taken out of the level, new pipes are dropped in, and the water drops start from the top again. But if the drops run out before you make any connections to the bottom, it’s game over.
Well, I loved this game. It took a while but once you get the hang of it and start to figure out the strategies, it all just clicks and makes sense. Twist a pipe here, get a connection going there, start connecting other pipes to the connection for bonus multipliers, and once that’s done get some pipes ready for the next set of new connections that will be dropped in. It’s frantic, fun, exciting and quite rewarding to get a bunch of multipliers all at once.
The unfortunate downside is how the difficulty is scaled. It really is a challenge right from the beginning, but very manageable once you get the hang of things. And like all good puzzle games, it starts to turn up the difficulty a notch the longer you play a level, making the drops fall faster and faster. But at some point, the drops fall so fast that it is completely impossible to keep up. At one point a bunch of new pipes fell, I had a full gauge of drops that were about to fall, and I immediately saw the connection I needed to make…but in just five seconds, all the drops were gone and it was game over. I don’t think a lot of players will quite get that far, but for those that do it will be a real disappointment.
No matter. The core of the gameplay is fun enough, the modes are varied enough to keep things relatively fresh, and the music is fairly good (no custom soundtracks hurts, though). I definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for a fresh action puzzle experience.
Click Here to purchase Droplitz from Amazon.com
This game was purchased for review purposes.