DropOut Development Story

The original version of DropOut was actually written for a college programming class. The class was Intro to Java Programming, and the final project was to build a game. I’ve always been a sucker for “match 3” puzzle games, so I decided to create my own.

When I started designing the game, I looked to other popular games for inspiration. I came up with the idea of making a game similar to Tetris Attack, but with game mechanics similar to PopCap’s Chuzzle. The idea was that you would try to match colored blocks to make them disappear before the board filled up, like in Tetris Attack, but you would move the blocks by sliding whole rows at a time, like in Chuzzle. Some of the pieces would also have locks on them, so you couldn’t move certain rows.

There were lots of technical challenges along the way. Early on, I made the decision that I wanted the player to be able to slide the rows even while blocks were simultaneously falling down or disappearing in other rows. After all, in a game where speed is important, nothing is more frustrating than when the game doesn’t let you move fast enough. Implementing this took some clever programming, but it was worth it. Another challenge was keeping track of combos for scoring.

I finished DropOut and turned it in at the end of the semester… and then I kept working on it. I added the “falling star” blocks, which made the game a bit more interesting. I also sent it out to friends and family and made changes based on their feedback. I knew the game was good when it got the mother-in-law seal of approval.

About a year went by where I didn’t work on DropOut much, and then the iPhone arrived on the scene. That’s when it dawned on me that DropOut was perfect for a touch screen. Being able to touch and slide the rows was just so much more elegant than using keyboard controls on a computer. The App Store was also proving to be a great tool for indie developers to self publish. So I ported the code from Java to Objective-C, redesigned all the graphics, added sound effects and online high scores, polished it up, and submitted the game to Apple.

DropOut was approved and released, and even though it didn’t make a big splash in the casual games market, it was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed working on it. Seeing high scores posted from all around the world was especially gratifying. Since the initial release, I’ve added, through updates, background music, a color blind mode, and even two new game types – Puzzle and Blitz. I don’t have any plans for a major update any time soon, but if I find time in the future, I think a multiplayer version might be a lot of fun. I’d also love to hear suggestions from you. Leave a comment if you have some!