Readers in the UK of a certain age will have childhood memories of a BBC children's TV show called Crackerjack. That was a live pot pourri variety show but the climax was always a 'Double or Drop' round where the competitors were laden up with gifts when they answered a general knowledge question correctly but were awarded a cabbage when they got an answer wrong; with the contestant eliminated if they collected three cabbages or if they dropped any of the items pile up in their arms. Anyone who grew up watching Crackerjack will have distinct sense of deja vu playing DroPolter from Oink Games, distributed in the UK by Hachette Boardgames.
There are of course no cabbages in DroPolter - you couldn't fit them into the 'trademark' small Oink box - but this is a real-time dexterity game that appears to cross elements of 'Double or Drop' with Zoch Verlag's speed matching game Geistesblitz (aka Ghost Blitz).
Open up the DroPolter box and you'll find a collection of small items that each of the 2-5 players has to clutch in the palm of one hand: a red cube, a yellow 'cookie', a white pearlescent seashell, a blue key and a transparent ring. There's a ghost meeple, a bag of bells and a deck of 30 cards.
Everyone starts off with the five artifacts in their clenched face-down palm as a card is turned over and revealed. The card will show one, two, three or four of the items, and players race to drop just the items shown and then grab the ghost meeple. The winner of this round gains a bell, added to their hand. If a player drops an object that they should have retained in their hand (including any bells), their bells are lost. The game is won by the first player to collect five bells.
Paul Schulz's design is super simple but DroPolter is nonetheless a fun dexterity game that can be played by all the family. You can play it with just two but it's at its frenetic best with four or five. And unless the players are all hamfisted, you will probably be able to play to five bells in 10-15 minutes. Tho' it's not an option offered in the rules, you can easily step up the difficulty by alternately reversing the requirements of the cards so that for some rounds players have to the opposite and not drop the items shown on the card...