Cluster Drop
About Cluster Drop
Cluster Drop is a shooter where what falls matters as much as what bursts. A hex launcher sits under a twelve column wall and lobs one ball at a time into it. Land three of a colour together and they go, but a single well placed shot can cut a dozen more loose behind them. Anything with no path back to the ceiling breaks off and rains down the screen. The wall creeps lower the whole time, and there is a pink line across the board you never want it to reach.
How to play
Drag or point to aim the launcher, then tap to fire. A dotted path shows where the ball will land, side wall bounces included. Three of a colour touching is enough to clear them.
Rules of Cluster Drop
- Six colours ride the wall: teal, amber, rose, indigo, moss and bone.
- The board opens seven rows deep and can hold twenty, with sixteen of them inside the frame at once.
- Rows are staggered, so a ball can wedge between two above it rather than sitting under one.
- A burst ball is worth ten points and a ball you cut loose is worth five, but a good cut takes a dozen at once.
- The whole wall slides down by one row every fourteen seconds, without pause.
- Cross the pink line and the run stops there. A ball whose bottom edge has crossed it flashes white as a last warning.
- The launcher will not aim more than eighty degrees either side of straight up, so a shot into the floor is impossible.
- The next ball is shown beside the launcher, so two shots can be planned as one move.
Controls
- Drag anywhere on the board to swing the launcher
- Tap or click to launch a ball
- The arrow keys or a gamepad stick sweep the launcher instead
What makes it worth playing
- A dotted trace of the shot, bounced off the side walls, drawn before you commit to it.
- A shot counter under the score, so a tidy clear and a lucky one read differently afterwards.
- Cut supports rain down in a staggered cascade, bottom row first, with a sideways kick that scales with how far they were from your shot.
- The launcher only loads colours that are still on the wall, so no turn is wasted on a dead one.
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-09-14.
Tips from playing it
- Shoot the ball that is holding a clump on, not the clump. One shot can take twelve down with it.
- The side walls are your friend. A banked shot reaches under a ledge that no straight shot can touch.
- Watch the queued colour before you fire the loaded one. Plan the pair together and the wall thins twice as fast.
- A burst pays ten a ball and a cut pays five, so two small bursts beat one clever drop of two. Go for the drop when it is worth six or more.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
The launcher is a hexagon now with a stack of four chevrons climbing out of it, sized so the barrel direction reads on a phone where a thin arrow did not. Behind it the cabinet went deep green with a teal to indigo gradient down the playfield, and the six balls were recut to hold apart at small sizes. A shot counter was added under the score, because a clear in nine shots and a clear in nineteen deserve to look different afterwards. The descent rate we left where it was. One row every fourteen seconds is the metronome the whole thing plays to.
More on how we pick and fix these: how we make our own editions of classic games and how we test a game.
We wrote about this one
- How we make our own editions of classic games. A tableau of cards, a sliding tile square, four discs in a row. Nobody owns those rules. Here is what goes into turning one of them into a game that holds up on a phone.
- Category
- Bubble
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- One shooter, one wall.
- Difficulty
- The wall drops a full row every fourteen seconds whatever you are doing, so a wasted shot is not free time, it is a row of ground given away.
- Typical session
- Five to twelve minutes a run.
- Last tested by us
- 2026-09-14
