Marble Drop

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Marble Drop
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Developer(s)	Maxis
Publisher(s)	Maxis
Platform(s)	PC
Release date	March 30, 1997
Genre(s)	Strategy
Rating(s)	ESRB - Everyone
System requirements	Windows 8MB RAM, 486/66 or faster, Windows 95, 2x CD-ROM, sound card, SVGA monitor supporting 256 colors.
Input methods	Mouse

Marble Drop is a puzzle game published by Maxis on March 30, 1997.

[edit] Gameplay

Players are given an initial set of 42 marbles divided evenly into six colors. These marbles are picked up and dropped by the player into funnels leading to a contraption of rails, switches, traps, and all sorts of various contraptions. The aim is to ensure these marbles arrive in their proper bin, labeled with the same color as the marble. The trick is determining how the marble will travel through the puzzle, and how its journey will affect the puzzle for the next marble.

When your marble runs over certain sections of the puzzle, the paths are possibly re-routed or cut-off, temporarily or permanently. For example, if the marble runs over a button, it might activate a "diverter" and send the next marble somewhere completely different. In essence, you have to visualize what will happen. Sometimes you can spot the principle immediately. Sometimes you can guess what might happen for the first couple of balls, and you have to just suck it and see thereafter. And sometimes you have no clue whatsoever!

There are a few further wrinkles to the game. At the end of a puzzle, the balls you put into their proper bins are returned to you. If you lost any marbles along the way, you will have to buy them when it comes time to need them. Steel balls are 20% the price of colored marbles, and so can be used as test marbles or to help release a catch when you don't want to use a valuable colored marble. Black marbles are very expensive, but acquire the correct color when they arrive in the target bin. You start with seven marbles of each color. Any surviving marbles are carried forward into the next puzzle.

There are 50 puzzles in all (including 5 bonus puzzles which can only be accessed via combination locks which appear in certain puzzles). Each puzzle is decorated with very nice Leonardo-esque sketches. Cleverly, explanatory notes in da Vinci's own fair hand form part of the background. These help you understand what new pieces of equipment do, lending a nice learning curve to the game. The sound effects employed are typical plinks and plunks, and they're pleasant enough.

The range of devices used in the puzzles is quite varied, ranging from buttons, switches and plungers in early puzzles, and on to transporters, splitters, marble makers and other space-age devices in the later puzzles.