Panic Drop is a classic arcade based game where you control what appears to be a ninja cube. The game has the cube sliding down icy slopes for the highest score in a fast paced non-stop reflex tester. The object of this game is to jump at the right times to avoid getting a game over for your little cube, and is done by simply tapping the screen in a certain direction to lead your little guy. The only thing you have to do is safely collect stars and keep going to rack up points.There are obstacles like falling platforms and ice walls that will interfere with your speed when you hit them for added challenge. The maps are randomly generated and change each time to give you new challenges with each play through.
Panic Drop starts off by throwing you in the middle of the game, kind of knocking you off guard. Since there is only one control which is tapping you do tend to catch on rather quickly. The problem is you don’t know what everything does since there is no tutorial. There are shield’s you can grab which are pretty straight forward, they give your cube protection for a selected amount of time. You can also run into clocks which slow down the timer, however, this can end rather badly as your jumping will be affected by the slowing of the game. The problem comes in with the obstacles that you can’t make out, like the weird tentacle looking squiggles you can run into. This causes a lot of confusion and game overs at first that could have been easily explained with a simple tutorial in the beginning.
Other problems arise in the jump, and loading of levels within the game. Panic Drop has a chance of loading you in on top of a spike or under a snowball which gives you an instant game over. Maps can also be generated unfairly pretty often leaving you at an unfair advantage that no portion of skill can out do. On top of that, the jump can get extra finicky at random points leading you to not be able to judge the distance that your cube will go when tapped. This sent me crashing into several spikes when I was completely sure I’d be fine. On top of that is possible to touch the top of the screen at the begging causing an instant game over thanks to the jumping issues. This causes the game to lose it’s charming appearance pretty fast for most people and leads them to find another similar game to download.
With all that said Panic Drop does have cute designs, as well as a rather pleasant background music. It’s free which gives it some points since you can easily try it out for yourself at no risk to your finances. The game is certainly not unplayable either and if you decide to stick with it you can press the X button at game over that will take you to a main menu which does have a “how to play” button although it’s something a lot of people may miss by just closing the game upon a game over.
