If Tetris and Pipemania had a love-child, it would be Droplitz. The game has players creating paths for drops to flow through. Drops which successfully flow to a U-shaped piece get added to the drop counter on the left while ones that don’t are wasted. When the drop counter reaches zero, it’s game over.
Players control the game by rotating tiles with different shaped pipes on them. Once a complete path is created, a purple droplet drips from the spout towards the bottom. When it reaches its endpoint, all regular drops in the path get added back to the drop counter and the tiles corresponding to the complete path disappear, making room for new tiles.
Although drops are constantly disappearing like a countdown clock, Droplitz has a strangely relaxing vibe to it. It must be the slow-paced music and the mood of the themes. The atmosphere of the game is nice to come home to after a long day at work. Even when I’m down to just 1 drop left in my counter, I never feel rushed or stressed.
Despite its relaxing atmosphere, Droplitz is a hard game. Like all good puzzle games, the mechanics are easy to pick up, but difficult to master. This will be made apparent to anyone who wishes to unlock the other modes. The game comes with just one mode available and players must reach a certain score in order to unlock the next mode and so on. This may annoy some, since paying for the full game only to have part of it inaccessible seems wrong, but I didn’t mind because it just forced me to get better at the game.
The different themes which get unlocked in the first mode of Droplitz are a nice touch. I could live without some of them, especially the heart theme which I just found to be distracting, but I did appreciate the change in scenery.
Droplitz is a welcome addition to my XBLA puzzle game collection. It’s not as hectic as other puzzle games I have (Hello, Super Puzzle Fighter) but still as addictive. What I can’t help wanting though, is a versus mode, especially with the use of power-ups and special tiles. Perhaps that’s in store for Droplitz 2?
