SNAP Review – Drop It

Drop It was designed by Bernhard Lach & Uwe Rapp and published by KOSMOS. It feels a bit like Connect 4 played with tangram shapes, if your object was to make as few lines as possible.

Hear our impressions of this strategic dexterity game in about 6 minutes, or read on for more.

Drop shapes of your color(s) into the vertical board (two pieces of clear plastic sandwiched together). Once they’ve landed, score points based for the piece based on its location, with bonus points for touching the small circles scattered on the board.

Only one catch – to score points, the shape you just dropped must not touch anything of the same color or the same shape.

Sounds simple enough… but once you’ve begun to fill the drop zone, you see challenges. A variety of shapes and colors may mean no “safe” space to drop. Try to drop in just the right way so that pieces bounce, roll, or wedge themselves into a scoring location.

Early in the game, pieces will move a lot because they’re falling farther.

Three player setup

It’s a crowd-pleaser and fantastic for spectators. Even playing competitively, we all groan when a well-dropped piece skews sideways and fails to land in a scoring position. But it’s also satisfying to drop just the right piece to block the next player from scoring.

Drop It plays well at all the player counts. With four players, each selects a single color of shapes to play. A two player game means each player takes two colors; but in a three player game, the 9 pieces of the odd color get divided evenly among the players. Every game uses all the pieces, no matter the player count.

Drop It is a satisfying play. No matter what strategy you use, there will always be surprises when gravity takes over. The pieces have just the right texture to sometimes slide and sometimes stand, leading to some unlikely-looking scoring.

Another unlikely scoring position!

Interchangeable cardboard inserts for the outside edges of the board allow you to decide either to use colors, shapes, or both to narrow the field of what’s allowed to touch the bottom and each side of the drop zone.

If scoring is too difficult, you can introduce the Joker tiles. Each player receives two, and may turn them in to score a piece that would otherwise be invalid. We think this would make a great way to rule-shift with kids having difficulty with the game.

As we mention, even our 4-year old understands the basics of the strategy. He and our older children will play together without adult help, and it’s one of the few “big kid” games that will keep his interest from setup through teardown.

Whether we use it as a filler game with our serious gamer friends, an introduction for novices, or play with our kids, Drop It keeps us coming back for more. It’s a new family favorite, and we can’t think of anything that could make it better.

Find Drop It on Amazon or at your friendly local game store. We highly recommend this for your family!

The Family Gamers received a copy of Drop It from KOSMOS for this review.