Drop Mania is a falling-block puzzle video game, developed by Ninai Games

Ninai Games

Ninai Games was a Finnish video game developer, founded initially as Detonium Interactive, Ltd. in 1998, then renamed Ninai Games, Inc. in 1999. The company specialized in puzzle games, such as Rampage Puzzle Attack for the Game Boy Advance....

 (as Detonium Interactive) and published by Suomen Kotijäätelö Oy

Hjem-IS

Hjem-IS , Hemglass or Kotijäätelö , all meaning "Home Ice Cream", is a Northern European brand of ice cream. It is known for its distribution system, being delivered to people's homes by its light blue ice cream vans and selling ice creams by the box, in contrast to ice cream vans other places in...

 in 1999

1999 in video gaming

-Events:*British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosts the 2nd annual BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards*March – Game Over republished as “Game Over: Press Start to Continue”...

 for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It was sold in Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 ice cream vans.

Gameplay

In a similar fashion to Tetris

Tetris

Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...

, coloured blocks drop from the top of the screen and collect at the bottom. The aim is to arrange groups of colours and then make contact with an explosion block. This destroys all the same-colour blocks in one group, larger groups earning more points. More points are also earned for combos (where multiple groups explode at the same time) and chains (where blocks falling as the result of an explosion cause further explosions.)

This same gameplay would be implemented in the 2001 game, Rampage Puzzle Attack

Rampage Puzzle Attack

Rampage Puzzle Attack is a puzzle game for Game Boy Advance, developed by Finnish development house Ninai Games and published by Midway Games.The game is based on the Rampage characters...

.

Super Drop Mania

The sequel, Super Drop Mania was also developed by Ninai, and published by Fathammer

Fathammer

Fathammer was a video game publisher and developer. They have developed game cell phones, the Tapwave Zodiac, and also the Gizmondo. Fathammer was acquired by Telcogames in June 2006, and X-Forge game development environment developed by Fathammer was sold to Acrodea.-Games:*Angelfish*Chronicles of...

 in 2005. It is designed for portable devices, being released for Symbian OS and Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...

. It met with good critical reaction, reviewers highlighting the floating game-play area, rounded graphics and entertaining gameplay. One review criticising the lack of a "one more go" feeling found in other Tetris variants, whilst another felt that it was even more addictive.