Drop Four
About Drop Four
Drop Four is a two player board game for one screen. The grid is seven columns wide and six rows deep, players take turns dropping a disc into a column, and the disc falls to the lowest free cell in it. First to line up four of their own colour in a row, a column or a diagonal wins the board. There is no computer opponent here, so this is the one to open when there are two of you and a single phone between you.
How to play
Tap any cell in the column you want. The disc drops to the bottom of that column. Then hand the phone across.
Rules of Drop Four
- The grid holds forty two discs, seven across and six high.
- A disc always falls to the lowest empty cell in the column you picked. You choose the column, never the row.
- A column holding six discs is closed and cannot be tapped again.
- Four of one colour in a straight line wins, and diagonals count in both directions.
- The names above the grid say whose turn it is and who is up next.
- Fill all forty two cells with nobody in a line and the board is a draw.
- Tap either name to rename it before the first move, so the board says who is actually playing.
- Play Again clears the grid and keeps whatever names you set.
Controls
- Tap a cell to drop a disc into that column
- Tap a player name to edit it
- Arrow keys move the focus and enter drops, for keyboard play
- Play Again resets the grid
What makes it worth playing
- Editable names on both sides, rather than a fixed pair of labels.
- The whole grid is reachable by keyboard, with a focus outline that follows the arrow keys.
- Discs are coral and gold instead of the usual red and black, and the gold is the brighter of the two, so the sides differ in brightness as well as in hue.
- Play Again keeps the names you typed, so a best of five does not mean entering them again.
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-09-14.
Tips from playing it
- Play the middle column first. It sits on more winning lines than any other column on the grid.
- Count threats before you block. A move that stops one line often builds two for the other side.
- Watch the odd and even rows. Whoever controls the parity of a column usually gets the last useful drop in it.
- A run of three with an open cell at each end has already won. Build one and a single block cannot cover both.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
We had a four in a row board that still carried its original developer credit and a link out to the code it came from, which is not what a game on our site should look like. So we made our own edition of it: a navy board, coral and gold discs, our own name, and that outbound link gone. We also tightened the grid so it sits inside a phone screen rather than spilling past the right edge, which it did at our test width. The rules and the keyboard support are unchanged. We played a full game on a phone before this went live.
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
- Board
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Players
- Two players sharing one device. There is no computer opponent, so bring someone.
- Difficulty
- Anyone can play inside a minute. Beating somebody who counts is another matter.
- Typical session
- Two to five minutes a game.
- Last tested by us
- 2026-09-14
