Raba Games

Factsheet

Developer:
Raba Games
Based in Wrocław, Poland

Release date:
February 7th, 2016

Platforms:
iOS

Website:
dropthealphabet.com

Regular Price:

Description

Scrabble is sold in over 120 countries. All together, approximately 150 million scrabble sets have been sold. However, some players may be looking for new challanges. We have taken gameplay to another level. Drop The Alphabet is a dynamic version of Scrabble, which requires forming words on the fly. Can you handle this?

Unlike the static nature of Scrabble, in Drop the Alphabet, you form words from falling letters, which adds additional pressure. However, do not fret. We have added free hints for beginners, which can help you through the first few levels of the game. After some time you will not need any hints, and you will be able to quickly form all possibilities. Another helpful and enjoyable feature is the so-called Magic Block. This block matches the surrounding letters to create the longest word possible.

The game offers two modes. The first is about clearing all blocks from the screen. Forming and clearing words load the green bar, which can remove the bottom row of letters from the screen. By clearing the screen in under thirty seconds, you will obtain four stars.

The second mode is all about survival. You will not only face falling blocks, but you will also have to worry about letters rising up from the bottom. The gameplay is faster and requires more skill.

Drop the Alphabet can be an enjoyable way to learn english, since it has a feature that will translate cleared words to a chosen language (currently Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, French, Hindi, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian).

History

Three years ago, I was a freshman studying Physics at University. In the winter semester, I took an introduction to programming course, and I really liked it. So, I decided to spend my summer holidays coding in my basement (ok, to be honest, I coded at the lake house most of the time). At first I wanted to make a mobile app, but, after my first glance at the Android SDK, I changed my mind. I thought “maybe a mobile game? It could be fun,” and I was right. I cannot imagine a more pleasant way to learn how to code.

I did not want to reproduce any tutorial or existing game, so I came up with a simple idea. I thought it might be fun to play a game that combines Tetris and Scrabble. At the end of that summer, the prototype was finished. And it was not good. Actually... I would not force my worst enemy to play it, so I made some of my friends play. It was almost impossible to form a word from the randomly falling letters. Despite this, some of my friends actually enjoyed playing it, and this motivated me immensely.

Now, let us move on to the one of the biggest headaches for individual indie developers - the graphics. The fact that I study Physics might give you a hint about my graphical abilities. To make matters worse, I am also color blind! You can only imagine the old graphics. I cannot share them with you, because they were somehow permanently deleted. But as they say, practise makes perfect. Three years later, my graphics were not perfect, but they were at least decent.

You might wonder when you look at my game why it took three years of work. I never intended for this game to be only a “learning project.” I wanted to make it as good as I could, before I published it. This is one of the reasons as to why it took so long. The second reason was definitely my physics studies. The studies are incredibly time-consuming, if you want to be a good student :). It is even more time consuming, if you have some side projects and research related to it. The last reason was the lack of inspiration. For most of the development time, my game was unplayable, broken and boring. However, there were few game-changing moments. A good letter generation system, the hints for beginners and, our favourite, the translations in floating clouds (special thanks to Jacek for the great idea). Now, three years later, I really like this game, and the time has come to publish it.

Oh, one last thing, the game was originally named “AlphaBlocks,” but I found that there is a TV show on the BBC with this exact name. They even published one game on the Apple App Store, so I decided to change it to “Drop the Alphabet.” (Thanks to Maciek for the idea, because I was too attached to the first title to be able to coin a new one).

Features

• Translations of cleared words (16 languages)
• Magic Block - matches the surrounding letters to create the longest word possible
• Hints show you where you can place falling letter

Drop the Alphabet Credits

Mateusz Bancewicz
Game Designer, Programmer, man who made Drop the Alphabet almost on his own

Maciej Krzykwa
Programmer

Jacek Krzykwa
Support

Contact

Twitter
twitter.com/rabagames

Web
rabagames.com

Inquiries
contact@rabagames.com