#7 - Drop Brick

Game: Drop Brick

Price: £Free / $Free | App Store |
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: iFun Studio
Rating: 4+

Design: 3/10
Sound: 5/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Overall: 5/10

Put Those Stacking Skills To Good Use
Use your balancing and stacking skills to arrange a series of blocks on scales. Achieve the target height and weight to progress to new levels and take on advanced challenges, as long as you can prevent your blocks from falling off the scales. The game is as simple as that, but don't let the low scores put you off, as this is certainly still something worth playing.

Design
The design really lets the game down although it does ensure an incredibly simple interface and makes it quick and easy to play. The background is simply ruled paper and some variation here, although perhaps a little distracting, would have been nice to see. There is incredibly minimal variation in the actual blocks that the game is played with and some variety here really would have been easy to do and would have added a nice layer of detail. All in all, it feels as though the bare minimum has been done and although this is in keeping with the simplicity of the game as a whole, it causes a lack of engagement and causes the game to drag out.

Sound
The soundtrack to the game is pleasant and is just about ambient enough to ensure the, often frustrating gameplay, is not added to by an irritating song. That said, there is an enormous amount of repitition and combined with a complete lack of SFX (there's not even a sound for the bricks landing on the platform) you'll be saving your battery in silent mode almost immediately. Sadly, the chances are you'll be doing that to ensure you have enough left to play another game rather than this one!

Gameplay
The gameplay offers a reasonably well executed puzzler that utilises the accelorometer to good effect. The controls are simple and effective with drags and swipes moving the blocks into place. Sadly, there's a great deal of repitition here too with weight and height being the only measurements of success combined with only a handful of level styles. The game offers 77 levels that increase in difficulty ensuring a decent amount of playing time and there's a nice feature that sees a number of future levels unlocked everytime you complete a level ensuring you don't get stuck and bored by one particular level. Sadly, that doesn't prevent a number of levels from becoming incredibly frustrating as the difficulty increases and the accelorometer comes more into play.

Conclusion
Overall the game has very few highlights and is unlikely to keep you entertained for long, but with a £Free price tag, it's certainly worth a look as the developer has at least achieved something that will challenge you. A lot of the free games on the App Store lack quality or are the dreaded Lite versions but this game certainly does not fall into those categories. I think as long as you take it for what it is (a short fun puzzler), then you'll get enjoyment from playing it.