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Pills
Arcade · Oldies · plays in your browser, no download
The piece is two halves of different colours, so every placement is two decisions at once. And unlike the falling-block games it came from, this one ends: clear the viruses at the bottom of the bottle and you have won.
Where it comes from
The two-colour pill falling into a bottle is a 1990 idea, and it came from a precise question: falling-piece games never end, and a game that never ends is complete but bleak. This one has an ending.
Two things separate it from its relatives, and both are real. The first is that the piece is two halves of different colours, which rotate around each other: it is not one object with a shape, it is two objects stuck together, so placing it well means satisfying two colours in two columns. The second is bigger: the viruses at the bottom are a finite list, and the level is over when they are gone. That turns an endurance test into a board to be solved, which is why you can play ten minutes and stop.
How to play
| Move | Left and right arrows. |
|---|---|
| Rotate | Up arrow — the two halves swap round. |
| Drop | Down arrow to hurry it, space to drop it now. |
| Clearing | Four or more of one colour in a line, upright or flat. |
| Winning | Every virus in the bottle destroyed. |
Note the four: it is not three. That one digit is why the board fills up so much faster than people expect.
Our version
The bottle, the viruses, and the half-pill left hanging in mid-air when its partner is cleared — which falls, and can set off the next clear by itself.
Three things that help
Work on the viruses, not the stack. Every pill that does not move you towards killing a virus is a pill making the bottle shallower. There is no points bonus for tidiness here.
Kill the top viruses first. A virus buried under six pills is a long job; the one at the top of the column is cheap, and removing it drops everything above it.
Park the wrong colours at the side. You will be handed halves you cannot use. Lay them flat against a wall rather than stacking them over the viruses you still need to reach.