Ok I am in for $50 plus some card packs!
“Carrier delay” with UPS, so I guess I’m not trying this out tonight. I should’ve just bought it in person at Best Buy.
Same here!
gah… been watching youtube playing of this… totally want it… my two sons checked it out and were like “I’d totally just keep playing it on freestyle” (age 10 and 8)
wow over 300 cards in the initial release (base set + all first release boosters)
I’ve spent a single evening with Dropmix in Freestyle mode so far and my initial impressions are strong. It feels incredible, even magical, to place cards on the board and hear the songs seamlessly blend together. It’s hard to overstate how good the system is at reacting to the new cards in a way that sounds very natural and pleasing. I’ve already had a bunch of moments where I add just the right instrument to my track, taking it to another level. It feels amazing. Dropmix is a totally unique experience when it comes to how humans interact with music. I love that Harmonix, a decade after Rock Band, continues to push the limits of music and entertainment.
I have some complaints/concerns though:
-I haven’t played the Party or Competitive modes, but I have my doubts about how much fun these modes will be compared to just enjoying the game in Freestyle. As such, I wonder if I will still be pulling this out to mess with few months from now.
-The possibilities feel endless at first, but after a few hours, I’m wondering how long until I get bored of the starter cards. The problem is there aren’t a lot of vocal cards or bass cards, which I think are the meat of your remixes. I expect to be tired of these vocal tracks before too long and see myself sticking to instrumentals in the long run. There are a lot of drum tracks included in the set, but they are kind of abstract and hard to use intentionally. Also the full-instrument cards are a little weird where they come in and dominate your mix.
-The card quality is really bad. The cards feel very fragile and the texture is not good for shuffling. I don’t usually sleeve my cards in games, but I immediately bought some sleeves.
-From what I’ve read, the bundling of the expansion cards seems horrible where you have to read guides online about how to get all the cards. Feels like an unnecessary hassle.
edit: Additional gripe - Call Me Maybe vocal track feels like a bad inclusion, and I don’t even hate the song. It just doesn’t seem to work in these weird keys you’ll often end up in. I haven’t gotten it to sound good once. On the other hand, the string track of that song is great.
Have you read the in-game hints that tell you how to change the key and tempo in Freestyle mode? That might help with Call Me Maybe. The game could use a small manual because there are a lot of small features that aren’t advertised or obvious.
My wife and I have had fun with the Party and Competitive modes. Give them a try sometime.
I’ve messed around a little bit with the key/tempo bars. I love that you can tweak them and you’re probably right it will help when the vocal tracks sound really off.
I’m going to check out the other modes when my girlfriend gets back in town and I may bring it over to a gathering this weekend. I’m excited to see how those modes play out.
From the Amazon listing of a 5 card Discovery pack purchase of “series 1” cards:
NOTE: This listing is for a single pack. Packs are sent at random, and there is a possibility of receiving duplicates packs when ordering more than one. Specific packs cannot be requested. The picture shown is for reference only. Actual packs may or may not match the pack shown in the picture.
And no mention anywhere of what songs might be included on these cards. I have to go to a Reddit post to get a list. Like honestly, what the fuck? What’s wrong with just selling it as a normal thing and telling me what I’m paying for? This isn’t supposed to be a collectible card game I’m buying into.
On the plus side, I picked up a Target exclusive Pop bundle of 15 cards for $15. Looks like there are also other exclusive sets sold at Best Buy and Toys R Us. But again, why do I have to go to 3 different stores to fill out my collection? The marketing decisions surrounding this game are frustrating to say the least.
Retailer-exclusive products are incredibly normal for add-ons for toys-to-life games, and for toys in general. Companies will keep doing them as long as people continue to be willing to visit a specific store to get the exclusive translucent-purple Twilight Sparkle or whatever.
The blind-box structure being applied to pieces for a game that doesn’t have a draft playtype or similar is far more obnoxious.
Impressions after just 30 minutes:
The cards feel like garbage, I worry they’ll fall apart before any app woes post-2019.
There is little documentation and I’m confused.
This still looks pretty cool.
OK, I snatched up one of the starter sets when they were $50 earlier this week.
I also bought three playlist sets from Toys R Us (including the TRU exclusive “Bomb” and which, possibly by accident, were all still on sale from the holidays). I also picked up the Target exclusive “Flawless” playlist and ordered a complete Series 2 Discovery card six-pack bundle from Amazon that was slightly cheaper than buying them individually.
So I’ve kind of gone all in, except the only thing I’m opening is the starter set until I know whether or not this is a good fit.
After half an hour of messing around with it…I’m not sure. And I have some dumb questions (and a comment):
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In Clash and Party, are you supposed to keep the core playlists (e.g. The Blade) together? Or can I just jumble them all up and deal them out? Is there any deckbuilding supposed to be going on?
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Has anyone played this with kids? Freestyle looks neat, but the main reason I got this is the gaming modes. The sample videos make the gameplay look pretty simple, which would be just the thing for my seven year-olds. But having tried to do a solitaire match, there seems to be a lot of icons and rules to remember, especially in Clash. Past experience tells me I need to be rock solid on the rules and be able to explain them clearly, or I’ll lose my kids in the first ten minutes. Any parents want to chime in?
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And now for the opposite complaint: Is there any strategy to Clash at all? At first glance, the rules seem overly complicated for the central match mechanic. Does the music actually figure in, or is it just cool (very cool) set dressing? If this goes over poorly with the little ones, is there enough “there” there to play with adults?
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I highly recommend mirroring this to your TV if you can. I know an AppleTV can do this, and I think Chromecast might be able to. For those who have neither (like me), I’m having excellent results with a $15 program called Reflector 3. It allows me to AirPlay mirror to my computer, which I then stream to various TVs that each have a Steam Link (yayyyy, $5 Steam Link holiday sales!). Having the app blown up on a 50 or 65-inch screen with the mixes blaring is wayyyyyyyyyy better than using my iPhone 6 Plus as the main display and speakers.
ugh… I was all gonna pull the trigger on this and now I’m getting cold feet!
My understanding after watching a lot of videos…
when playing Clash, you keep sets together. so it’s like “BLADE / CONTROLLER vs. HIGHNESS / SWEETS”
I don’t think Clash does anything with icons, only with the color and volume levels.
I believe the music is just window dressing for a rather basic card game (agree… VERY COOL window dressing - and most likely why I’ll still eventually get this)
I’m totally regretting not getting a steam link now.
All - please keep the reports rolling in!!!
I also still don’t understand what cards I’m supposed to use for party mode.
Here’s the setup screen:
So if I’m playing by myself, I need 30 cards. That’s two full playlists—I think you’re supposed to use complete, 15-card, playlists for party mode, clash is for “deck building” and freestyle is a free-for-all—but what do I do with these two stacks of 15 cards? If I shuffle them together as one 30 card deck to draw from, it only registers one of the playlists at the party setup screen, is that okay? Do I register them separately first? Because that only leaves me a few seconds to shuffle them into a deck to draw from after hitting the button to start.
I do not understand how to play this game and it is terribly documented.
But I also drove to Toys ‘R’ Us, two Targets, and two Best Buys, so now I have all the cards. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can also tap the squares to join. I don’t think it matters how many cards you use or what decks. Party mode tells you when you’re supposed to draw and how many cards to draw, so you can just as easily use a giant deck of all the cards in the game.
Clash CAN be for deck building, but you can just as easily play it with just random cards pulled from the full deck. My girlfriend and I played just drawing from the deck in the middle of the table when we needed to.
I guess I really need to break this out with some other people, it doesn’t exactly shine as a single player game. The tech is cool and the music mixing is very impressive, but solo party mode isn’t much of a game really.
Freestyle is also really cool in theory, but it’s going to take its own sort of skill to get good at creating impressive mixes. And I wish there was a quick way to reset the tempo. As far as I can tell, unless you completely clear the board, the tempo remains at whatever the very first card was that you played in your mix. I wish you could quickly tell it to shift to the normal tempo of a specific card as you start to layer things instead of having to fiddle with the slider.
the “wild” cards usually shift temp and key. Alternatively you can manually shift it.
I’ve tried a number of different modes. Single player party mode feels more like a training game, to just expose myself to different cards that I might not play with.
I’ve had a good time playing clash against my kids. And my kids enjoyed playing both the clash, and the co-op Party mode with one another.
They’ve been enjoying it over all
For the cards I’ve picked up thus far.
All series 1, Flawless (Target exclusive), and Bomb (TRU exclusive)
The card stock is a joke… total joke. The RFID that’s inside looks to have a solder point on the top face of every every card. After maybe 3hrs or so of playing with them it looks to start poking through, and the top of the cards are no longer solid black, but now have a tiny white dot on the lower right side of nearly every card.
I picked up some penny card sleeves to see if it helps keep the newer cards I’ve picked up in good shape, we’ll see…
I picked this up based on a lark as a filler present for my kids. After half an hour, they were both DJs and loving the game in Freestyle mode. I thought the game did a great job of NFC recognizing the new cards and instantly pulling together a new mix. We bought the Series 1 and 2 cards directly from Hasbro and 200 card sleeves from Amazon after the first sessions. It really was an amazing experience for us; we were all completely enthralled.
The cards did seem to wear pretty quickly, as others indicated.
Here is the Reddit faq: https://www.reddit.com/r/dropmix/comments/7a6auv/frequently_asked_questions/
Hey card expert mans, I have question. I bought the “Discover Pack” series 1 and 2… these are 30 cards each, total of 60, plus whatever was in the dropmix box itself. Do I need more cards? Do I need to drive all around town like cough some people?
There are six Playlist packs, they each have 16 cards (a complete “playlist” of 15 + one for a secret playlist of eight other cards).
The packs are:
- Hip-Hop (“Mirrors” - sunglasses icon)
- Pop (“Derby” - roller skate)
- Rock (“Ouroboros” - snake eating itself)
- Electronic (“Astro” - astronaut helmet)
- Hip-Hop (“Bomb” - spray paint can) - Exclusive to Toys R Us
- Pop (“Diamond” - a diamond) - Exclusive to Target
They all retail for $14.99 and are considerably more expensive to order via Amazon, but there’s no ambiguity about which pack you’re getting. You may be able to order the non-exclusive ones from Hasbro, not sure if they’re in stock from the official site.
There’s also a promo card with the Transformers theme that was only available through some GameStop promotion or given away at events, good luck finding that for less than $50 on eBay, but every now and then people still stumble across a GameStop that still has some.
Ok so how do the Discover Packs factor into all that???