My copy of Drop7 has broken - and it's drawn me back in

My copy of Drop7 - if you can call the file on a smartphone a copy - is having a Groundhog Day moment. Every time I load it up I join an ancient game part-way through. Level 3 on classic mode, 17,003 on the board and a 2 hovering above the playing field ready for me to land. I got you babe. It's weird. I can't remember starting this game, and I never play Classic anyway because I prefer the immediacy of Blitz - although people who know better than I do tell me that Classic is actually more of a challenge. Anyway, every time I open it up it's the same story: Level 3, 17,003, where do you want to put this 2?

The funny thing is that I haven't loaded Drop7 up for quite a while. I'm still convinced it's the greatest puzzle game ever made, but I've had to have time away because it all got a bit serious. Super quickly, Drop7 is a game in which you drop numbered tiles, from 1 to 7, into a playing area. If the number of tiles in a row or column matches the number on the tile, then the tile vanishes. You get points, and it also starts to bust open any covered tiles that were touching it. When those tiles are eventually revealed to have numbers on - woo! Combo-time. It's simple, but it's also thrillingly, terrorisingly complex.

And this is where it gets a bit serious. Games of Drop7 are short - they are if you're as bad as I am anyway. But after each game, it gives you your score and also your average score. Man, the average score thing is brutal. It's brutal because a run of bad games can absolutely tank it, and then you need a run of good games to get it back where it belongs. Quite quickly, for me the average score became the Drop7 equivalent of a bank balance towards the end of the month. I would avoid looking at it. And I would also try to avoid doing anything that made it worse. So eventually I stopped playing.

But now, with my Groundhog Day copy of Drop7, the average score resets every time I play again. It's so freeing. Sure, it's a shame that I no longer carry this proud weight of history around with me, but on the plus side I no longer carry this proud weight of history around with me. Each game of Drop7 is the thing in itself - the only thing. I can finally live in the Drop7 moment.