DropMix

DropMix is a music game wherein players take pop songs, represented as NFC-
enabled paper cards, and drop them onto a Bluetooth-connected board to create
entirely new mashups that are played via the Android or iOS app.

Each card represents one part of a particular song, like the percussion
section from Imagine Dragons’ ‘Radioactive’ or the keyboard from Carly
Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe.’ When placed on the board, the card is read and then
the app will play that particular section of the song. There are five slots on
the board, so five parts of a song can be played at a time in each “mix.” The
app automatically adjusts whatever it’s currently playing to the new cards,
doing its best to make the change smoothly so the overall mix is not
interrupted. If a new card is placed on top of one already played, the new
track will replace the previous track’s part card in the song.

There are three game modes: Clash, Party and Freestyle.

Clash is a head-to-head battle between two individual players or four players
on two teams. Each player takes a deck of cards, either 30 in a two player
game or 15 in a four player game. They draw a hand of five to start. Each card
has information on the front on where and how it should be played:

* Each card has a color: blue, green, red and yellow. The colors correspond to the section of the song. They can only be played on the slots of the same color on the board.
* The top left corner has a series of bars, up to three, indicating the card’s power level. It is also how fast that particular song section is (but this does not factor into gameplay). Cards can only be played on top of cards of equal or lesser value.
* The symbol in the bottom left corner indicates the instrument that card represents: bass, beats, harmony or vocals. This will correspond with the color.
* The symbol in the bottom right corner indicates what “playlist” the card belongs to. The playlists are organized by genre. This has no bearing on gameplay but each player is usually assigned one of the four basic playlist symbols as their in-app avatar.

There are also black-and-white cards that disrupt play, by allowing players to
remove cards from the board or play an extra card. Finally, the rainbow “wild”
cards work just like the single-colored cards except that they can be played
on any slot and represent both colors if the space is marked for two shades.

On each turn, a player must have five cards in their hand. They then play one
or two cards on the board. One point is awarded for each card played, with
bonuses for being the first to play a particular color, or for controlling the
entire mix. If a player has no cards to play or wishes not to play a card,
they can hit the “equalizer” button on the board, which will destroy cards on
the board belonging to the opponent, chosen by level or color.

The first player to hit 21 points wins.

In party mode, players are tasked with fulfilling card requests within a time
limit. The app may ask for cards by level, color or instrument and an
appropriate card must be placed on the board. Failure to either put down a
card on time or to put down an acceptable card results in a strike. The game
may last about 20 rounds but can end sooner or go on even longer depending on
the players’ performance.

Freestyle mode is a non-game mode where players can put whatever cards they
want on the board in any position to create personal mixes of their own
preferred tracks. Any mix the player likes can be saved.

Each boxed DropMix set comes with the board and a deck of 60 cards. Additional
cards can be purchased in themed playlist sets of 15 or random packs of 5.