Gem Drop - Why reading the rules is helpful.

I played Gem Drop on iWon several weeks ago while looking for games to review. I played a few rounds and got bored. (All you do is match 3+ gems and they vanish. Gems fall from the top. Yippee.) The game was SO simple that it couldn't hold my interest at all, and I wanted to fail just so the game would be over. 

My top score was 282,000, which I figured was pretty good.

Yesterday, I came across Gem Drop again. I figured that I'd comment about how I didn't like it just so I could cross it off my list and be done with it. But first I had to play it again so I could get screen shots. Last time I didn't read the rules, because I figured it was just a match 3 sort of thing. This time I read what I was supposed to do.

And that's when I discovered I'd been playing it wrong. The goal isn't to keep a clear board or make as many matches as possible. The goal is to make chains, so that when a group of gems vanish they will trigger a cascading reaction of vanishing gems. The amount of points you get with each chain increases exponentially.

Check out my new high score. ^_^

Boo-yah!!

Yeah. I added nearly 6 million points to my best score. O_O I also got over 68,000 coins for that game!!

Trying to make chains can be quite challenging. Several times I thought I had things set up nicely, only to discover that really I'd just made a mess. It seems that I'm not nearly as clever as I think I am.

Not an example of a chain.

You get more points with bigger groups of gems. *Try* to set up groups of 4+ as often as you can. Diamonds are worth more than the other gems. *Try* to set them at the end of a chain, so they will get the biggest bonus.

There is a dark grey round stone that will drop every now and then. When it lands on top of a gem, it will remove ALL of that gem from the board. Very very useful in higher levels! No bonus points for letting it hit the bottom.

As the levels progress things start getting really chaotic. Starting around the end of level 8, I had troubles visually keeping up with the gems. By the time I realized what gem was about to drop, it had fallen and so had two more.

In addition to the insane speed, Gem Drop has another hair-pulling feature that I've yet to see in any similar game. And that is:

The dropping gem(s) aren't put on hold when a chain reaction is set off.

This means that you have to drop gems while your board is shifting. In the first few levels it's a little disorienting, but still No Big Deal. Once the speed picks up it becomes more of a nightmare. I can't decide if I like the added challenge or if I prefer my sanity instead.

It's a toss up.

Gem Drop is a Progressive Jackpot game with a max pot of $2,000. You will most likely get 10 spins. ^_^

Reality Check
The odds of winning the JP for Gem Drop are "no worse" than 1 in 3,000,000.
The odds that an adult will dress up as a cat for Halloween are 1 in 40.

Keep that in mind for next October!


Final Rating
Once I understood the rules, Gem Drop became a LOT more interesting. ^_^ But the controls aren't as smooth as I would like and that can cause frustration.

I will probably tackle this game once in a blue moon, just to see if I can beat my high score.

3.5 stars out of 5.