ZYMODROP — Drop capsules, line up four, and let the cascade do the rest

What is ZYMODROP — Drop capsules, line up four, and let the cascade do the rest

ZYMODROP is a falling-block puzzle with an ending. Two-cell capsules drop onto a petri dish that already has pathogens stuck to it, and lining up four or more of the same colour in a row or column purges them. You are not playing for survival — each sample has a fixed number of pathogens and clearing them all evolves the sample and starts the next one. Losing happens the ordinary way, by stacking to the top, and the run ends there.

What makes the scoring interesting is the cascade. When a purge drops the cells above it and those cells form another four, you get CHAIN ×2, then ×3, and each wave multiplies the points of everything in it. A group of five or more does not simply purge, it detonates and wipes the surrounding cells, which is the main way chains get started deliberately. Reaching chain four triggers a flat bonus. The samples escalate: the third brings faster incubation, the fifth introduces toxin cells that cannot be matched and only clear when something next to them purges, and later samples add a fourth colour.

How to play

1. Move the capsule with the left and right arrows, soft drop with the down arrow, and hard drop with Space. Rotate with the up arrow or X one way and Z the other.
2. On a touch screen, swipe to move, tap to rotate and swipe down to hard drop, or use the button pad at the bottom of the screen.
3. Four or more of one colour in a row or column purges. Five or more detonates and takes out the neighbouring cells as well, which is how most long chains are started.
4. Clearing every pathogen on the dish finishes the sample and moves you to the next one. The run only ends when the stack reaches the top.

Strategies that work

• Build flat and leave one column open, exactly as you would in any falling-block game. The difference here is that the open column is where you set up a detonation: a group of five built against the wall clears its neighbours too, which is worth far more than four in the middle of a tidy stack.
• Do not chase the pathogens in the middle first. The ones at the bottom are the ones holding everything else up, and purging a bottom row drops the whole stack, which is free chain potential. Clearing a top pathogen drops nothing and wastes the capsule that did it.
• Colour before position. With three colours you get a useful capsule roughly two thirds of the time, but from the third sample onwards there is a fourth colour and that drops to half. From that point, place for the colour you are short of rather than for the neatest fit.
• Toxins from sample five are not obstacles to work around, they are timers. They clear only when a purge happens next to them, so a toxin in a column you have abandoned will still be there when the stack reaches it. Plan one purge per toxin, early.
• Chain four is the single biggest payment in the game. Two separate three-chains are worth much less than one four-chain, so if you can see a way to delay a purge by one capsule in order to add a wave to it, delay it. The analyser lights at the top count the wave you are currently on.

A little history

The falling-capsule puzzle is one of the most copied designs in games, and almost every version keeps the same flaw: it has no end. A board that only ever gets faster is a board where the player's skill is eventually irrelevant, and the run ends because the machine sped up rather than because anything was decided. ZYMODROP takes the format and gives it a goal — a fixed number of pathogens per sample — which changes what a good move is. Clearing the bottom becomes more valuable than clearing anything, because the bottom is what the count is made of, and survival becomes a means rather than the point. The cascade multiplier is the reward for playing that way well. In the daily challenge both the starting dish and the entire capsule order come from the day's date, so two players on the same day get exactly the same pieces.

Frequently asked questions