As a parent, I can’t help but giggle when I look at the title of this game. There’s absolutely no way to track the number of times I’ve had to say “PUT IT DOWN” … or “GIVE IT BACK” … or as is relevant to this article, “DROP IT”! Little hands operated by little brains can’t help but be tempted to pick up things they know they’re not supposed to. It’s a great way to win immediate attention, and I’m sure that a child was the inspiration for the phrase “there is no such thing as bad publicity”!

Published by Kosmos, with a design from Bernard Loch and Uwe Rapp (Qwinto being the most popular title worked on by this duo), Drop It is a game for 2 to 4 players (or two teams!) and lasts about 30 minutes. The box recommends the game for ages 8 and up, but as we’ll get to in a bit, this game can easily skew much younger.

The game begins with an upright plastic contraption in the middle of the table. Each player starts the game with a collection of wooden shapes in one colour, which everyone uses to take turns dropping into the top of the contraption. When a piece lands, we check if it touches another piece of the same shape and/or colour. If it does not, that player score points equal to the highest level any part of the dropped piece reaches, ranging from 1 to 8 points. Once all pieces have been dropped, the game is over, and whoever has the highest score wins!

Added complexity can be brought into the game by using side and bottom edge pieces, which prevent players from scoring specific shapes or colours, should a piece be touching a matching edge of the contraption. Using these edge pieces makes this a surprisingly tactical game, and the adult friends I played with asked for repeated rematches, which were all completed within the span of an hour. Seasoned gamers would likely describe this as a greatt “filler” (a short game to play between larger games, or when waiting for a full gamer group to assemble), and for families, this would make for an amazing game to play together after dinner for some playful bonding on a school night. For these reasons, Drop It is being awarded… 

TWO BIG THUMBS UP!

For the little thumbs in my home, I was able to introduce this game to both my 5 and 3 year old daughters, and they intuitively understood how the game plays with almost no direction. In our first game, we played with no restrictions – any piece could be dropped, and would score points regardless of what pieces it touched. While this stripped the game of any tactical element, it allowed them to grasp the basic concepts easily. After our first game, we added the restriction about matching colours, which allowed my girls to think a bit more about the pieces they were selecting. For the third game, we only restricted touching shapes, and for our fourth play, we included both restrictions, playing the most basic version of the game as intended by the designers. We had tremendous fun with Drop It, and both of my children were fully engaged in the experience through all four games played. 

We keep our children’s game collection limited to 20 to 25 games, so that we can revisit favourites on a regular basis. Drop It has bumped another game out of that collection, and won a permanent space on our Little Thumbs gaming shelf. So it will come as no surprise that this game is getting…

TWO LITTLE THUMBS UP!

Bright colours, intuitive gameplay, and opportunity for learning through spatial reasoning and addition. This is a game we absolutely recommend, and one where you can say “DROP IT” without that stern parental voice!

The Daily Worker Placement thanks Kosmos for sending a review copy of Drop It for this article.