Drop Drive by Phase Shift Games

You ever see a board game and immediately think, “Wait, you do what to start the game?” Drop Drive opens with a literal physics event: you drop asteroids, fuel, space junk, and an alien onto a plastic half-sphere sun, then play the entire session in the galaxy that scatter creates. It’s a bold dexterity board game idea, and it turns setup into a moment people will talk about. 

We walk through how the game actually plays once the novelty wears off: your alien auto-collects nearby resources, you measure movement with a chain-link tool, and you fly a custom ship around grabbing cargo to deliver to planets for space credits. Along the way we unpack the ship upgrades, passengers, and the weirdly charming specimen system that scores through endgame synergies like weight and other traits. If you’re searching for a Drop Drive review or first impressions, we get specific about how the delivery loop feels at the table, what “input randomness” really means here, and why routing can start to feel like “grab the closest thing and cash it in.” 

We also dig into combat and interaction. You can attack aliens to steal their hoarded rewards or hit other players to take cargo, but we debate whether it’s necessary when resources don’t always feel scarce and the dice-plus-bonuses system can make fights feel low-risk. We close with who this might be best for (family board game nights, curious gamers who love tactile systems), what expansions might fix, and our thoughts on price and production quality. 

If you enjoy thoughtful tabletop game discussion, subscribe, share this with a friend who loves dexterity games, and leave a review with your take: does Drop Drive have lasting depth, or is the drop the whole point?

Transcript

Intro And The Drop Mechanic

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. It's time to dodge, duck, dip, drop, and drive. Because today we are talking drop drive by Phase Shift Games. Joining me as always is my co-host and co-pilot of this spaceship, Clayton Gable. How are you doing, Clay?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I'm doing good, Travis. I am liking what I'm seeing here when Drop Drive. I found out about this two minutes ago when you said you wanted to talk about it, and I see a spaceship that does have spaceships.

Setup And Components

Turn Flow And Deliveries

Randomness Versus Strategy

SPEAKER_00 0:49

It does have spaceships. Tell me what if I told you that uh you could have a game where Sir Isaac Newton is your game master. That is what drop drive is. Um, basically, it is a kind of space road trucker type game where you are flying around the cosmos and delivering goods in a custom-built spaceship. Uh, but this one actually has a little bit of physicality to it. There's a map, and in the middle of that map is a half dome, a half sphere dome that is made of up of plastic. And then in your little baggie that has all your parts, you have asteroids and space junk and some fuel canisters and an alien. And you take those and you drop them on the sun and they scatter everywhere, and you're basically ready to play. This is, I don't know why this is this image is showing that's kind of a prototype of the game. But, anyways, the goal of this game is to score the most amount of space credits by picking up and delivering uh asteroids and uh passengers and specimens to the required planets. So the setup for the game is super easy. You set up this kind of bullpen looking area with a neoprene mat underneath it, and in the middle, there's that half sphere that is made of plastic that is the sun. And then everybody is issued a captain token. You're issued two of them, you pick one, and the captains all have slightly different aspects to them, but they don't really play any different. It's just like you get a bonus movement or you get a bonus die pip in combat. Then you're issued some uh holes for your spaceship and some cargo space for your spaceship, and you can pick which ones you want and you hand them back, and then there's a big pile of uh specimens, ship upgrades, and um passengers, which are aliens, and you can kind of pick which of those that you want to keep and which ones you want to hand back, and then you have cards for all of the planets that are going to be on the field, and so the setup's super easy. You literally just like drop a bunch of asteroids right above the uh sphere, they scatter everywhere. Then on your turn, you will drop your planet, and the planets are the different colors that are associated with your player character, and then uh you each have an alien, and the alien gets dropped from about three inches off the sun and scatters everywhere. And so on your turn, it looks like this. I take my alien that's already on the field, and the alien will collect the nearest resource that doesn't come to me, even though it is my alien, technically. I control it, but I don't get the resources. That alien will set those resources aside on its designated color planet, and then I will take my movement. My movement is based on these kind of chain link type plastic pieces that measure the distance that you can travel. If I have a movement of five based on the characteristic characteristics of my ship, I have five links in that chain. I can kind of bend it and move it around. It kind of looks like a Dungeons and Dragons or like a Warhammer movement measuring tool. Um so you will move your spaceship around through the different asteroids and space junk and fuel canisters that are out on the field, and you are collecting them in slots on your ship that will soon fill up. Then once they are full, or maybe before, if it befit benefits you, you will land at one of the planets that are that is out on out there on the field, and you will turn in those asteroids for points. Each planet can accept up to two or three different colors of asteroid. So you have to go to specific places to deliver certain colors. If you turn in the space junk, uh that gives you upgrades or specimens or passengers that you can add to your ship. And if you turn in the specimens, um which go to certain planets, um, those will give you different benefits, or it will um you can fill up your specimens on your ship that will give you different kinds of in-game scoring bonuses. And then the passengers might be beneficial to deliver or not. They all have kind of different traits, but the end goal is to score the most amount of points, and the game ends. There's like these little kind of blue blocker tokens that every time you turn in a certain resource at a certain planet, those like blocker spaces fill up the slots on the planet. Once you're out of those blocker kind of tokens, the game's over. Um, and that's that's about it. Um, movement is based on your your chain links. Um, when you get the fuel canisters, you can use it to drop drive, where you either drop your ship again from the planet, or you can go through wormholes, or you can you know drop next to a planet. Um, so there's like different ways that you can move around. Uh, but the end goal is to create these synergies uh between passengers, your ship upgrades, the specimens you're carrying, and the asteroids that you return to try and score the most amount of points at the end of the game before you run out of those blocker tokens for the planets. Clayton, what sort of questions do you have about drop drive?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Oh, countless questions. Okay, this looks weird.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

It is weird. It is a little weird. Um, it is a lot of, you know, since we've been talking about input versus output randomness, this is like input randomness the game. Because when you drop those items from three inches above the sun and they scatter everywhere, um that's like the input randomness that you're having to deal with, and you're just trying to make the most out of your turns.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

This is okay, so it's hard to get past that weird dexterity like element of it where there's just like a literal spatial puzzle that you have to navigate with chain link fences. But if all that weren't there and that like novelty, is the actual game of what you're doing fun? Like, is picking up that stuff and delivering it at planets and like it would that uh alone be a satisfying game, or is it really getting a lot of mileage out of hey, look how cool it is to drop all these things, and then you have to like really actually measure like you're in space or whatever?

Combat And Player Interaction

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah, I mean, that is a great question, and I'm not entirely sure. I I'm some people will get a huge run out of this, and there are expansions that create some more depth to this game. Um, I've only played this once with the base game. This is all a first impression, but I didn't find the actual like play by play, the actual decisions I was making to be all that rewarding because it just felt like a fetch quest the whole time. I go out, I collect what I need, I get to the nearest planet, I cash it in as fast as possible. Now, there might be some like, I don't know, 4D chess that you're playing here where like you're planning way ahead and you're drop, you're you know, going through the wormhole at the right time to collect this piece and then to to move over here to do that. I missed all of that. Um, I I lost to a person that has played this probably five, six times. Um but I got close on my first try. So I think that there's a a little bit of a curve here with the randomness that can benefit new players. Um I don't know, man. It feels like a fetch quest. Like go out, collect a thing, and turn it in. Now, what I did not get into was the combat. Um, there's your alien. Yeah, your aliens are out there collecting these uh resources on their turn or like right before you take your turn. And if I want to reap those benefits from the aliens that are collecting, I can go attack a nearby alien. I roll a die and add up bonus pips based on the on the aspects of my ship. Somebody else rolls for the alien. If I get a larger number, meets it, beats it, whatever, um, then I will get all of those rewards that the alien was holding on to, and I can slot them into my ship and then transport them. So that's one option. The other option is I can attack other players and take some of their uh stuff that's on their ship. Um I can attack them either because they are already on a planet that I want to land at, or I can run into them in space based on the movement links that I have to go out there and attack them. And combat works the same way. We both roll die, we get bonuses based on our ship qualities, and then we do this kind of exchange of goods. Um I don't think the combat is all that groundbreaking or interesting. I didn't, I never felt like it was a true risk because my ship had bonus pips allocated to it that I would basically have to roll a one to lose. Um I never really felt like the combat was all that interesting. Uh I'm talking about against against the AI pirates or or the aliens or whatever, or against the Yeah, so the the Yeah, maybe against other players, uh it would have been more interesting, but I never felt like that was a necessity to get ahead in the game. Like it feels like people are playing their own type of game. Yes, you might swoop in and steal a resource from me early or something, but there's so many out there that I it never felt like a scarcity of resources like a uh like a um worker placement game or something where like, oh man, you beat me to that spot. Now I can't get it this turn. There's still opportunity out there, and even if I can't reach it within my sphere, I can always wormhole to it, or like you know, there's other solutions to every problem that never felt it made it feel like it was a a huge risk. Yeah, it attacking other players never seemed worth it to me. Attacking aliens, sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I I attacked a couple aliens, but but that you said didn't feel satisfying because you felt like you could always win. Basically, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

What are the questions you have?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I don't know. It to me, this seems like a game that that I would play once and think it was interesting, but I would never play it again.

Family Fit And Expansion Hopes

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe some of the expansions do different things that add a lot more depth. Sorry, excuse me. Um but I I I didn't feel like it was all there. Like it's it feels like it needs something else to make this game like really worth it. Um it is a novelty, it's fun to drop the pieces on the sun, but that lasts all of two seconds, and then you're playing the game and you get to drop things every once in a while, and you kind of react how you react, and that's about it. Uh plus mine, I dropped my planet, and it kind of scattered to a far edge where like nothing else was. Yeah, and so for the whole rest of the game, I'm like, man, I can never go back to my planet. So I'm out there just delivering to other people's planets that are far closer to the aliens, to the space junk, to the asteroids. Like everything's located on one side of the galaxy, Matt. Um, and I'm on the far other side, and that just never felt great. Yeah. Um, it would be far more beneficial if you can just like go out and back real quick. Um, one of the rules is that you cannot leave one planet and land on another planet in the same turn. You have to leave the planet, go out, circle around, and then the next time it comes around, then you can land on another planet to turn in goods. Um, each of the planets has like special abilities that it'll give you. Like you can move the planet or swap resources or do this, do that. Um that those never really came into play in a beneficial way. Um and then the specimens that you collect all have very strange attributes to them. So they are different colors, like different suits, and you add them into the slots at the bottom of your ship, and the specimens all kind of play off of each other for endgame scoring. And the attributes that they give them are um number of eyes, the weight that they have, like how much they weigh, and I don't know, some other thing. Um, and then they play off of each other. Like if you have multiple specimens that weigh under 10 kilograms, then you get two credits per specimen that weighs under 10 kilograms or whatever. Um, and so you're trying to create some synergies across all the specimens that you're collecting to try and earn the most amount of points at the end. I I don't know, man. I yeah, it was fun to try. I and I kind of hemmed and hot about buying this one once upon a time. I'm glad I did not. Um, maybe somebody's out there that has played all of the expansions, or maybe I'm not seeing this game for what it really is. Uh, this is still early impressions, but it just it kind of fell flat a little bit with me. Um, it's something simple, it's something light. I let me go back to the weight. I I cannot remember what it was.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

And if we sound ho-hum about this, like I have no reason. I mean, I'm just listening to what Travis said, and yeah, based on my taste. But clearly, I mean, it's 237 ratings and it's 7.4 average rating. So people do like this game. So by all means, don't uh let our ho-hum uh rearly impressions of this uh tarnish your opinion too much. But yeah, for me, it seems like there's too much, there's too much and too little going on all at the same time.

Price, Production, And Final Take

SPEAKER_00 15:26

And I and I will jump in one last time to say this is rated at uh ages eight and up. So like you can play this with a family, and the kids might get a kick out of it because it's fun to drop the stuff on the sun and watch it go scattering across the galaxy. Uh, but the actual decisions that you make and the building of the ship and the delivering of resources and even the combat just never felt like really satisfying. They're all pretty, they just felt like kind of shallow interactions that uh could be improved upon. Maybe they are in some of the expansions. So uh if this game sounds interesting, I I would recommend trying it at least. I'm sure there's probably places that you could check this game out and try it. Um and I I know that it doesn't sell for all that much. I think I saw it for sale um when I went on my trip. I think I saw it for like 20 bucks, 25 bucks. Might have been a used copy. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

What about 50?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

50, okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Um just based on the buy page of BoardGameGeek.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

I'm looking for I'm sure that there's used copies of this out there. Um, the production is pretty nice. Um, the guy that I played with had 3D printed his own um kind of holders for the perimeter around the galaxy. Uh, I guess just baseline, it comes with some pretty basic holders for those kind of barriers, and it has some gaps in it so that when you're dropping asteroids and stuff and they go out to the barrier, they'll like slip between the cracks and end up like off the table. Um that's not very cool for a game that's about dropping things and physics-based placement. Um cool at all. Yeah, so the production is okay. Um, the the asteroids that you deliver are like these little plastic kind of um opulescent gems. Um those are kind of cool. Everything else is all wood components um for the space junk and the fuel. And then it has a couple of dual-sided boards or dual layer boards for the planets and stuff. It's fine. The production's fine. It's nothing to write home about, but it got the job done.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah. Well, let's not beat this dead horse. I think I think we get the picture. I'd try it.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah, it's worth a try. It's kind of cool. It's kind of a novel thing. I don't know how many games like the setup is drop everything from three inches above the table and just let it play.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

So the setup is super fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Are we ready to get out of here? Let's get out of here. Did we do it?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Let's put this spaceship into reverse.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Let's dock this spaceship. Yeah, I have been Travis. He has been Clay. This has been Drop Drive by Phase Shift Games. We have been Operation Game Night, and we are out.