DevCraftAISwitch-and-drop puzzle
Dropbound
Trace the pipe. Set the switches. Then let go.
Dropbound is a puzzle about reading a route before you commit to it. A ball sits behind a gate at the top of the board, and below it glass pipes fork at switches and cross over and under one another on their way down to critters held in bubbles. Nothing moves until you press DROP, so you can study the board for as long as you like, set the switches, and work out an order that frees every critter before the board's balls are spent.
How Dropbound plays
The answer is on the board
Every pipe is clear glass in a single colour, and pipes that cross never join. The route to any critter can be followed by eye from the bottom back up to the mouth it starts from, so a board is solved by tracing, not by trial.
Two kinds of switch
The coral switches stay where you put them; tap one and it turns. The navy flip switches ignore your taps and all turn over by themselves at the end of every drop, wherever the ball went. A board with flips on it looks one way for this ball and the other way for the next.
The order is the puzzle
Critters can be freed in any order, and once flip switches are in play the order decides whether the rest are still in reach. A board gives you one ball more than the fewest it can be cleared in. Clearing it earns a star, clearing it first time earns a second, and using no more balls than the minimum earns the third.
Corks and holes
Later boards block some pipes with a cork you can see through the glass, and add a hole at the bottom that sends the ball back out of a bent pipe the gate can't feed. Both are visible before you drop; neither is a surprise.
No lives
A failed board is simply played again, as often as you like, and your best result on each is kept. There are 300 boards, plus a daily board that is the same for everyone.
At a glance
- Genre
- Switch-and-drop puzzle
- Platforms
- iOS and Android
- Input
- Tap a switch, then press DROP
- Price
- Free to play, no lives
Official site
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