Drop Drive Deeper Space Edition Review

Overview

One advantage that board gaming has over other types of mediums is its tactile nature. The ability to hold the game pieces in your hands and move them around a play space. Some games lean more or less into this aspect, but Drop Drive goes all in on it.

Drop Drive melds the very concept of playing with fun doodads right into the core of its gameplay. To the extent that it’s the only game I’ve ever played where setting up the game is actually exciting. I’m not kidding, a good portion of the setup is gathering its components, and dropping them on the table to scatter them, forming a uniquely laid-out universe for every game.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

The dropping doesn’t stop there. You will drop your ship and many other components all game long, while also forming a link tool, and using it to physically determine your ship’s flight path amid the cosmos.

In Drop Drive you will navigate the universe, collecting scrap, fuel, and asteroids to sell to various planets. You might also encounter pirates or other players, and even game-changing anomalies. There is a sandbox nature to Drop Drive, both in its gameplay and its rules set, allowing you the flexibility to customize the game to your liking.

I reviewed the Deeper Space edition, which comes with a few extra built-in expansions and other goodies.

Gideon’s Bias	Drop Drive Deeper Space Edition Information
Review Copy Used: Yes	Publisher: Phase Shift Games
Number of Plays: 10+	Designers: Scott R. Smith
Player Counts Played: 2 & 4	Player Count: 2-5
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Sandbox, Unique
Fan of Weight: No	Weight: Light
Gaming Groups Thoughts: Enjoyed It	Price: $100

Presentation

Drop Drive has a large variety of components, pieces, cards, and tokens. Every part of the game is vibrant and colorful, and even the relatively generic pieces look and feel nice. Drop Drive has a unique personality within its cards and artwork that lands on a playful but not overly childish vibe. There are various cards that represent the front and back of ships, as well as explore and anomaly cards.

There are a ton of tokens and pieces that represent asteroids, planets, salvage, and fuel. These are dropped on the sunpiece to scatter them and form your unique galaxy in each game. The set of planet tiles is thick and has an inset layout for placing market demand tokens. I’m a big fan of inset components, and these ones are quite nice.

Drop Drive also comes with some nifty ship tokens, captain tiles, dice, and credits, as well as the notable nav link tools. You snap the links together to form your link tool, and its length depends on your ship. You bend and manipulate this tool to determine your flight paths. It snaps together and comes apart quite nicely.

There’s also a huge number of components for the game’s anomalies, an optional system you can add for increased variety and depth. It even includes extra scenery and cards for designing your own anomalies and I love that. The game includes special sleeves for separating the components for each anomaly, which is nice. But I couldn’t fit everything back into the box once separated, which is unfortunate.

Finally, there are the folding galaxy walls, which caused me a great deal of frustration. They are thinly made and don’t cooperate at all when it comes to setting up the hexagonal arena to contain the galaxy. I ended up using a set of cardholders called Ti’tains that I obtained through Etsy to hold them in place. I would have liked to have seen Drop Drive include some type of clips to help keep the walls snug.

Drop Drive is an easy game to learn, but the rulebook is a mixed bag. It’s written well enough but uses a staging system for its complexity. Essentially, you play this way for your first game, then add this, then add that, etc. However, it splits that complexity throughout the rulebook in annoying ways.

For example, a page will list some rules. Then in another color text, read “Do this in a full game of Drop Drive.” It means my brain has to filter out those words while I’m learning the game, which causes me to inadvertently filter out rules I actually need.

I understand the idea behind easing people in. But Drop Drive isn’t a highly complex game, to begin with, and first impressions matter. It should show the entirety of its strength right away and just streamline the learning process in other ways.

That said, uncooperative galaxy walls aside, Drop Drive is very fast to set up. Furthermore, the setup is exciting as you get to dump a pile of bits and bobs onto the sun and see what your play area is going to look like.

Drop Drive Deeper Space edition is a bit pricey at $100. However, keep in mind it comes with two expansions and two deluxe component sets that are normally sold separately.

What I Like About Drop Drive Deeper Space Edition

The Tactile Nature

Drop Drive feels good to play, I mean that in both a literal and figurative sense. The concept is pretty simple, you fly around collecting cargo and sell or turn in that cargo to planets. But there is a satisfying physical nature to most of the gameplay. For example, you will often need to “drop” stuff. When you sell cargo, for example, you “drop” it. Most things are dropped physically over the sun and onto the table.

Your ship has a drop drive, and depending on the type of ship you have, you can drop over planets, other ships, or anywhere. You physically take your ship and drop it over the location, where it lands, is where it lands.

Dropping things is just simple, tactile joy. It’s akin to rolling dice, a physical thing that’s simply fun to do. It has the added benefit of altering the map as you play. If an object bumps into another object and moves it, that’s all part of the game!

Dropping isn’t the only way you move your ship around. Using your drop drive requires fuel, so your most common method of travel is through your rocket drive. You assemble your link tool with a number of links equal to your rocket drive, and this can change throughout the game if you acquire certain upgrades.

The link tool is used almost like a tape measure, but one you can bend and flex to you’re liking. You place the back of your link tool to your ship and then flex it to form the path you want. Then your ship moves along that path interacting with everything it touches along the way. In most cases, you simply pick up cargo and add it to your cargo holds.

However, you can also encounter pirates, and other players, land on planets, and interact with various anomalys. The link tool is another small and simple tactile feature that makes the simple act of moving your ship more interesting. It’s fun to bend and flex your link tool to move your ship through the specific objects you want to interact with.

Drop Drive’s tactile nature works incredibly well because it’s not just a gimmick to play with the pieces. The physicality of it translates straight into Drop Drives strategic gameplay and it doesn’t lose an ounce of depth in favor of its touchy-feely personality.

The Openness

Drop Drive has an end goal, but how you get there is relatively open-ended. At the start of the game, you put aside four market-demand tokens per player. Every time a player sells an asteroid to a planet, a market demand token is placed on the left-most open spot on the planet corresponding to the color asteroid sold.

They are sold in a batch, however. So, for example, selling multiple pink asteroids wouldn’t place more than one market demand token at a time. When the last market demand token is placed, the end game begins, and credits are tallied up. The wealthiest player wins.

The path to the end game is pretty open. Obviously, you are going to want to collect and sell some asteroids, preferably to planets paying the most for a given color. As it changes when market demand tokens are placed. But that’s not the only way to gain credits.

Passengers can be delivered for various bonuses, and you can collect specimens. Each of these has its own end-game bonuses and often combos with one another. There is a large stack of explore cards that contain specimens, passengers, and ship upgrades. Turning in salvage nets you a card, but ships also have explore ratings, allowing you to draw a number of them while planetside to choose from.

You’re ship itself is a unique entity that you create at the start of the game by choosing between a random set of two front and back cards. Your ship determines your cargo space, drop drive, rocket drive, combat rating, explore rating, and how many specimens you can hold. Upgrades can be placed between the front and back of the ship to expand its capabilities and add to its increasingly long and funny name. You receive a random captain at the start of the game that has a starting bonus, but it’s just that. It doesn’t dictate your playstyle.

You’re free to explore space in the way you choose and prioritize whatever you want. Be it asteroids, passengers, specimens, or any combination of the three. Pirates and other players roam the system, and you can interact with them if your ships meet. You can offer to split nearby loot or bear your weapons, allowing them the chance to surrender a piece of cargo or enter a battle using dice for higher stakes.

All of this is governed by the excellent drop and link system, and it’s surprisingly strategic and interactive. The market demand system offers an indirect way of interacting with other players. While the option to directly interact, peacefully or aggressively is always there. The challenge of using your ship’s capabilities amid a solar system that is ever-changing and vastly different between games can be a real head-scratcher.

The placement of the asteroids versus the planets willing to buy them is a factor. As well as the locations of the pirates and the other players. A player’s actions send small ripples throughout the universe, and even seemingly small things may alter the course of someone’s plans.

And I haven’t even mentioned the anomalies yet.

The Anomalies

The anomalies consist of a set of cards and a special set of components that govern each anomaly. There are multiple ways to use anomalies, and the game encourages you to mix and match methods. You can even start with one in play for additional variety.

However, anomalies are usually triggered when a ship meets and interacts with an anomaly token. The player draws a card from the anomaly deck and what happens next is based on how your group decided to use the anomalies at the start of the game. The simpler method is to use the short-range scan effect. The card simply has an immediate effect and that’s it. For example, if you drew the Space Mines card, all other players would take 2 damage.

If instead, you used the long-range scan effect. You would pull out the special set of components for the Space Mines. In this case, you would get a free upgrade and then drop the mine tokens onto the Galaxy map. From then on at the start of each player’s turn, they could attempt to detonate mines by physically flicking them at other ships!

Every anomaly has a short-range version and a pack of components and rules for its more complex long-range version. Each long-range scan tends to have a profound effect on the game, opening up new threats and options. You can mix and match how you use the anomalies. For example, the common way I played, is we started with a random one active, then the first one drawn would use the long-range effect. While the remaining two drawn would use the short-range effect.

Anomalies are a big wildcard that offers additional variety, replayability, and unpredictability. Each one is a lot of fun no matter which method you choose to use them. Since they mostly come into play from a ship interacting with an anomaly token, it’s another decision point to factor in when planning your ship’s route. Do you play it safe and avoid the anomalies, or give the universe a good shake and see what happens?

Drop Drive Deeper Space Edition comes with 14 anomalies, and some extra cards and components that allow you to create your own. A concept I really enjoy.

The Sandbox

Drop Drive is a sandbox game, not just while you play it, but before you set it up. The rulebook offers several methods of modifying the game and ultimately leaves it up to you to modify it further. For example, I felt that with two players the game ended a little too fast. To remedy that, we simply added a few extra market demand tokens to lengthen the game, and it didn’t impact the balance in any noticeable way.

You can choose to use anomalies however you wish. All short-range scans, all long-range scans, or any combination in between. You can make your own anomalies with the components provided or grab some game pieces from another game to add to the drop. If you want a smaller solar system or one that’s shaped differently, move the galaxy walls and have at it.

The possibilities may not be quite as infinite as Drop Drive’s tagline implies, but you certainly have a lot of freedom to tailor the game to your own liking. As an avid homebrewer, it’s nice to see that functionality built in and assumed within the game’s design.

Verdict

Drop Drive Deeper Space Edition is an excellent game that’s so unique I can’t properly tag it with a genre. It combines a satisfying tactile nature with some pretty cool strategic gameplay.

The Galaxy Walls and Rule Book are a bit frustrating, and the price point would give me pause if I saw it on a Game Store shelf. But beyond that, I’m hard-pressed to find anything I dislike about the game. It’s not as heavy as the games I usually favor, but its sheer magnetic personality backed up by a satisfying gameplay loop is more than enough to win me over.

It adheres to one of board gaming’s greatest strengths, the physical touch and manipulation of its pieces. I can’t always explain why that feature matters so much, but it does. It’s like taking part in role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. Sure, in the digital age, we could simply use digital dice rollers, but most people don’t.

We buy clackity rocks with numbers on them and make them go clickity clackity, which causes something in our ape brains to light up and feel good. When it comes to Drop Drive, making stuff go clackity and scattering it across the table isn’t just for giggles. It’s core to the gameplay, and all the strategy Drop Drive offers orbits around that excellent gravitational pull