Number Drop

Ah Tetris! I remember playing my Gameboy for hours on long journeys. A tiny monochromatic screen with an even tinier image on it. Eventually I upgraded to a colour model, but my love of the block dropping game was forged in the original grey shaded world! And don’t tell my son, but after he has gone to bed, I am not opposed to playing a few games of Tetris 99 on his Switch!

A few board games out try to replicate the gameplay of Tetris. And plenty involve slotting tetronimo shaped pieces together. But Number Drop by AEG does a good job of making me feel like I am holding my Gameboy in my hands!

Dropping Like It’s Hot!

Every round, 5 dice are rolled by the active player- 4 D6 and one custom dice showing different tetromino shapes (or a wild) and 4 showing numbers (or a wild which can be used to add numbers up to value 9). The shape dice shows how the numbers will be added to your sheet. The shape must drop to the bottom but can be tessellated just like its gaming inspiration! You don’t outline the shape yet though!

The main game scoring occurs in a few ways – you can score whenever you get groups of 3,4,5,6 or 8 adjacent values which are either (1) consecutive (up or down) and/or (2) the same. You can only use those numbers once per scoring opportunity, however! So once they have been used, you outline them, and they are effectively redundant for the remainder of the game (unless they are being used to complete a row). The amount of points is equal to the number of matching values so e.g. a group of 6 orthogonally adjacent 2s will score 6 points. You can also get end game VPs for completed rows, completing all the adjacent and/or consecutive scoring groups, and even a crazy 8 number group bonus!

But, whenever a star is rolled, a blocking block is activated by the active player! If that player has completed both the adjacent and the same scoring goal for a particular sized group (they will circle the number drop for that pair as soon as achieved) at the time the star appears, the allocated block must be drawn by all other players on their own sheets – this can fill up their sheets (closer to the Game Over rows) as well as disrupt scoring groups and rows! If the active player hasn’t yet circled the number drop, play continues as normal.

The game continues until one player draws any number in a Game Over row. Then all points gained and deducted (minus 5 points per Game Over row even if only one number is drawn in a row!) are calculated and the winner is the player with the most points!

Final Thoughts

I didn’t know whether Number Drop would scratch my Tetris itch. A few games have tried but always left me unsatisfied. This one is different, however. It actually feels more like Tetris 99 with others sending me garbage blocks to mess up my rows and columns! But either way it is good fun! It essentially becomes a series of forwards and backwards racing; striving to be the first to score groups of matching and consecutive numbers so that you can circle the number drops in readiness for the stars to appear. But then simultaneously not wanting to fill your sheet up too much too quickly because you could hold off and score for a larger, more valuable group!

Sending blocks to other players sounds harsh – and when it happens to me it is a menacing moment. But you can use them to your advantage sometimes – they still count when completing rows for end game VPs and sometimes they act as useful scaffolding for new groups. So take that husband! Haha

Interaction is limited to the number drop moments – in all other ways it is multiplayer solitaire. But I like the quiet thinkiness of it peppered with brow furrowing as I see yet another series of crosses heading my way. It also works really well as a solo game, and I would hope so given its single player spiritual origins!

The components are nice too – good sized sheets, lovely translucent dice, and a board to hold the randomly selected number drop shapes for the game. It didn’t include pens or pencils though so you will need to supply your own. I have found it handy to have a slightly thicker marker for outlining groups once they have been scored so that I don’t double-up and use the same number twice.

Overall, we are enjoying Number Drop and I’m looking forward to getting better at number dropping my husband back to the 90s! haha