Mallow Drops

Okay game that is full of minor issues that end up ruining your experience. * Brute-forcing the puzzle usually works a lot better than trying to carefully plan ahead because there are way too many things to consider. Not my kind of puzzle, but it could be yours. Those puzzles seem nice enough if you like that style, which I don't. - Gamepad support is bad. It kinda works, except there's no pause button, and navigating the menus is awful. - Every time I beat a level or unlock an achievement, the games produces a Window Security pop-up trying to login to their servers. Every. Single. Time. - None of the options from settings actually work. You can change them, like fullscreen or volume, but there's no actual change. - Some optional side-puzzles make no sense at all, even for those who solved them. - Game is terribly flawed and seems to have been abandoned. Even if you have already purchased this, I'd say "Don't waste your time".

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EDIT 11/21/21 [h1]The Dev has checked out and the game's basic functionality is collapsing[/h1] see the Steam Forum: as you complete every level the game tries to run some netcode to put you on the leaderboards, but the web site it's trying to reach is defunct. This causes a weird pop-up the interrupt gameplay. You can still get past it and play on -- and leaderboards do still work, technically, but the game's is clearly not being maintained and I can't recommend it at this point. Switching to thumbs down, sadly. Original review follows. --------- [i]Mallow Drops[/i] is a cute little puzzler where your goal is collect 3 Kiwi-eggs on each of 80 levels, then reach a door to exit and move on. It's well-built (mine froze only once in ~18h of playtime, when I was really button-mashing for no good reason), and the soundtrack is high-quality even if it isn't a vast soundscape. Graphics are serviceable, with a little variation between 4 "Worlds." I got it on sale, and I don't think I'd be thrilled if I paid the full price, but it's worth a playthrough. Most levels can be beaten in <30s or maybe 1m, [b][u]after[/u][/b] you know what to do. Puzzling through them for the first time can take…

Mallow Drops, developed by Gritfish and published by Green Stripe Snake, is a deceptively simple yet ingeniously designed puzzle game that blends physics-based movement with gravity manipulation to create a deeply satisfying experience. The game centers on two kiwi birds on a quest to recover their lost eggs scattered throughout a world shattered into fragments. Beneath its lighthearted, storybook aesthetic lies a series of intricate and sometimes fiendish puzzles that demand sharp spatial reasoning and foresight. It is a game that begins as something charming and approachable but quickly reveals a cerebral core that tests patience, planning, and adaptability in equal measure. The foundation of Mallow Drops is built on two key mechanics: momentum and rotation. Rather than walking or running, the player slides in one of the four cardinal directions until colliding with an obstacle or wall, reminiscent of ice puzzles found in classic games. This creates a natural sense of inertia — once you move, you commit. The second mechanic, the ability to flip or rotate the entire level, turns this otherwise straightforward movement system into a playground of shifting perspectives. Each rotati…

You know that game, where you have these blocks in a square area you need to move around so a smaller block can go from one end to the other? Usually the small block is a car or a boat. This is the notion of that game with a cool twist of rotating the world and enemies. It's a really cool concept, you can play a few levels and come back later. Real easy to get into. I recommend it! After a few hours of playing it, it is quiet the puzzle-gem, its totally worth it if you like puzzles where you have to play around with a lot of moving parts to get something done. Its a lot of fun!

I was thoroughly charmed for my whole play-through of this sadly overlooked puzzler. Its combination of puzzle tropes was novel to me: you rotate the level to move blocks around with gravity, but your player character, a cute little kiwi, moves by flying straight until it hits something, as in a classic ice puzzle. Your goal in each puzzle is to grab 3 eggs, then land at the exist that appears. Each of the 100 puzzles in Mallow Drops builds nicely on the core mechanics, from close-quarters traffic jams to wonderful linchpin moments when you find just the right alignment of blocks to fling yourself across the length of the level to the goal. A fair number of additional elements are trickled in over the course of the game, which are fun to discover and all fit nicely in the game's broader design, even the enemies with their simple movement patterns. It never gets too difficult, especially if you regularly play spatial puzzle games, but it's brain-ticklingly pleasant throughout. It does lack an undo feature, which many modern puzzle games have, but I didn't miss it as it's rare to render a level unsolvable. My only substantial complaint is the handful of bugs that have been noted by o…