Drop Alive – Review
When it comes to games, collecting and building out a library of epic proportions can be quite painful on the wallet. Invi Games has spared your wallet. You’ll be glad to know that their title: Drop Alive is completely free. All you have to do is download and enjoy the game. It might just seem like a drop in the ocean, all little things amount to large ones. The developers are also still making sure the game is being updated regularly, so you’re getting even more bang for your unpaid buck.
Story
You are a single drop left in a vase, and you are wondering what it’s like to shake off this loneliness… So you venture out into the harsh and often dry reality in search of your goal. To find your goal, namely the river, you’ll have to traverse various terrains and overcome many problems. For a free game, Drop Alive isn’t all that rich in story, but what little there is, is fully fleshed out with the intro and outro.
Graphics
Having children friendly visuals, does not make a game ‘kiddy’. The aesthetics of Drop Alive look like you are playing an interactive comic or even a graphic novel. Its fairly outspoken style are suitable for every type of gamer, and perhaps this may be one of the games best features, as everything looks like it comes straight out of a fairy tale. Drop Alive’s vibrant colors and its hand-drawn look show that the developers handled the graphical department with care.
Sound
Drop Alive might be ‘just a free game’ but that doesn’t mean the developers have skimped on the audio. There’s no voice acting, but you’re a drop for crying out loud so what’s it supposed to say? It will however yelp whenever it’s hurt so you’ll have an audio queue to know when you have to watch out for something. The music score is also quite nice for a free game, it’s not just a simple loop that just plays over and over again ad nauseum, but a full fledged soundtrack.
Gameplay
Drop Alive is a platforming game. The game has no tutorial, but it doesn’t need one, as the controls are simple. The only thing you control is the path of your droplet. This is done with the arrow keys. The game is reminiscent of Super Meat Boy as that an obstacle can look super easy to overcome but when you actually reach it, it is more of a struggle than first imagined. Drop Alive isn’t a ‘one pathway’ game, it pays off to explore the levels. There are no maps or waypoints or even checkpoints in the levels so you’ll have to explore to see what works.
Being just a drop of water rolling around on platforms in the game wouldn’t quite make Drop Alive worth taking a second look at. However, water comes in three states: gas/vapor, liquid and solid. So at one point you’ll drop onto a hot surface only to be turned into a little cloud and you’ll have to look for a solution higher up, all the while avoiding flames and other hot surfaces that shorten your lifespan. Staying still also decreases your size and thus your life, so you can’t just wait around, but you have to always be on the move. Touching a cooler surface turns you back into a liquid form, making it possible to wall jump. When you touch a frozen obstacle you’ll turn into a solid round block of ice and even though you’ll speed through the levels you’ll also be difficult to control, so every state is worked out with its cons and pros.
The dangers to look out for in this game are mostly clear. Fire is bad for water and hot surfaces turn you into steam, blue is safe and drops make you bigger again. Spikes, as in any platforming game, are to be avoided. These are lethal, but sometimes you’ll die from jumping too close in front of them and sometimes you’ll land just on the corner and you’ll be fine, which brings up another issue. Finding out the dangers and what’s safe is easily done, but when it comes to the hitboxes, the game is rather finicky. At one point you might be jumping over spikes or avoiding flames by mere millimeters and sometimes the game just decides you didn’t make it even though you were further away from the danger than last time. It’s not that big of a deal, but unclarities like that can often lead to a game feeling like it’s being unfair and frustrating. All in all the hitboxes could be a little more forgiving.
The levels are quite short and sweet. There are a total of twelve of them, but some are more difficult to clear so your playthrough may last you about two hours or so. Drop Alive is also a game you can pick up and put back down, you don’t have to rush through it, which is a good thing as some levels might irritate you with the unclear hit boxes.
Conclusion
Drop Alive is a free platforming/puzzle game that has you clearing levels in several conditions. If you are looking for a fun short and sometimes challenging game this will be right up your alley. Even if you aren’t really looking for a platforming game, the art and sounds might draw you in and it doesn’t hurt to try out Drop Alive as you won’t have to pay for it.
Drop Alive - Review,
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