How to play
Pieces of coloured glass tiles fall onto a mosaic wall ten tiles wide and twenty tiles tall. Each piece is made of four tiles in one of seven shapes. Turn and slide a piece while it falls; when it lands it sets into the wall. Fill a whole row and it is grouted into the mosaic and disappears, so the tiles above drop down. The game ends when the wall fills up to the top and a new piece has no room.
- Keyboard: ← → move, ↑ or X rotate clockwise, Z rotate counter-clockwise, ↓ soft drop, Space hard drop, C hold, P pause.
- Touch: the button strip under the wall has the same seven controls.
- Holding ← or → slides the piece repeatedly after a short delay.
- The faint outline at the bottom shows where the piece will land if you hard drop it.
Hold and next
The Next panel shows the three pieces coming after the current one. Hold stores the current piece and gives you the held one instead, or the next piece if the hold box is empty. You can hold once per piece; a held piece comes back upright.
Pieces are dealt in bags of seven: every shape appears exactly once in each run of seven pieces, so you never wait more than twelve pieces for a long bar.
Scoring
| Clear | Points |
|---|---|
| 1 row | 100 × level |
| 2 rows | 300 × level |
| 3 rows | 500 × level |
| 4 rows | 800 × level, or 1,200 × level when the previous clear was also 4 rows |
| Combo | 50 × combo × level for each consecutive piece that clears rows |
| Perfect clear (wall empty after the clear) | 1,000 × level extra |
| Soft drop | 1 per row |
| Hard drop | 2 per row |
Every 10 rows you move up a level, and the pieces fall faster. Level 1 drops one row per second; by level 10 a piece falls almost eight rows a second, and from level 20 a row every frame.
Lock delay
When a piece touches the stack it does not set at once: you have half a second to slide or rotate it, and each successful move restarts the timer, up to fifteen times per piece. The timer and the fifteen moves only reset when the piece falls to a new lowest row, so a piece cannot be kept hovering forever. A hard drop sets the piece immediately.
Strategy
- Keep the wall flat. Holes under tiles are the main way runs end, because you cannot clear a row with a hole in it until the tile above it is gone.
- Leave one column open on an edge and save the long bar for it: four rows at once pays more than twice as much as four single rows, and back-to-back fours pay half again more.
- Use hold early. Holding the first awkward piece costs nothing and gives you a spare when the stack gets tall.
- Watch Next, not the falling piece. Deciding where the next piece goes while the current one falls is what keeps you ahead as the speed rises.
- Rotate at the wall. Pieces that do not fit after a turn are nudged away from walls and the floor, so a turn beside the edge still works.
If you enjoy Mosaic Drop, try Moth Flight or Oil Wrestling next.
