Drench. It is a game.

November 6, 2009 6:21 AM

Here is a simple game called Drench.
posted by thirteenkiller (44 comments total)

Awesome! I used to play this in MS Paint all the time! I'm glad someone finally made it a game.
posted by DU at 6:28 AM on November 6 [2 favorites has favorites]

That...is excellent. Something to distract me from real work!
posted by notsnot at 6:38 AM on November 6

That's really fun.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:39 AM on November 6

I have a basically identical game on my iPhone called "Flood-It." It's been one of my favorite time wasters.
posted by General Malaise at 6:43 AM on November 6 [3 favorites has favorites]

Brilliant
posted by fire&wings at 6:44 AM on November 6

A good tactic is to try to form a diagonal by working towards the bottom-right. Once you've opened that up, you expose a large number of blocks and can clear up quite quickly.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:49 AM on November 6 [6 favorites has favorites]

And see also Virus 2, a hexagonal version.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:50 AM on November 6 [2 favorites has favorites]

I played the game. It is fun.
posted by brain_drain at 6:55 AM on November 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

There's not much here, fun, but only twice.
posted by Napierzaza at 7:27 AM on November 6

Awesome. I tried twice and failed twice; both times by one move.
posted by bz at 7:28 AM on November 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

Anyone know if there's anything like this or Virus 2 for iphone?
posted by nevercalm at 7:30 AM on November 6

Cool!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 7:36 AM on November 6

Do the levels get harder, or do you just get less moves?
posted by smackfu at 7:38 AM on November 6

Awesome. I tried twice and failed twice; both times by one move.

Same. This should be 31 movies instead of 30 so I can move on.
posted by cj_ at 7:39 AM on November 6

Two of the colors are very similar to my colorblind eyes making it even harder.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 7:44 AM on November 6

nevercalm: look at my previous comment.
posted by General Malaise at 7:49 AM on November 6

I feel like the Borg.
posted by ropeladder at 7:50 AM on November 6 [1 favorite has favorites]

FYI, the little "reload" button on the top right restarts the entire game, not just the level you are on. :(
posted by ropeladder at 7:52 AM on November 6

Did it with 4 moves left.
posted by deezil at 8:07 AM on November 6

A good tactic is to try to form a diagonal by working towards the bottom-right

This really does work well. You don't even have to pay attention to the rest of the board, just the tip of the diagonal that isn't connected to the corner.
posted by smackfu at 8:18 AM on November 6

Lost it at 25 moves. Fun game!
posted by faineant at 8:19 AM on November 6

The iPone has a game called infection. Same principle, but instead of your number of moves decreasing with each level, the number of squares increases.
posted by rtimmel at 8:30 AM on November 6

Ok sweet, I need this on my iPhone.
posted by Kimberly at 8:54 AM on November 6

Cute game. Feels a bit like a lite solitaire version of Blokus.
posted by meadowlark lime at 9:14 AM on November 6

This is exactly like a game called Mad Virus that I've been playing on Kongregate for a few weeks now and was about to post.
posted by schyler523 at 9:16 AM on November 6

what, it took you folks more than 6 moves? You're not doing it right.
posted by HuronBob at 9:24 AM on November 6

The diagonal strategy kind of works because even though you're not maximizing the number of conversions with each turn, you're increasing the perimeter of the converted area, which pays off in the endgame. The naive strategy of building a large contiguous area is counterproductive (a circle has the minimum perimeter for a given area); you want something spindly with lots of filaments reaching all over.

As the turn count limit decreases, though, you have to start making tradeoffs.
posted by Rat Spatula at 10:10 AM on November 6

Yeah, once you figure out the strategy, it's too easy...
posted by spiderskull at 10:42 AM on November 6

What's the strategy on doing it in 6 moves?
posted by meadowlark lime at 10:55 AM on November 6

I first discovered this game as Flood-It!, a gadget for Google Homepage/hi5/Orkut/Myspace/LabPixies' own fancy toolbar, and became addicted. When I discovered it existed as in (free) iPhone app , I was incredibly thrilled. I had no idea it existed in this form, and it makes me wonder whose came first. I definitely prefer the look of the LabPixies version, as the white blocks in Drench really throw me off for some reason.

LabPixies has a lot of other pretty cool gadgets on their site, provided you have somewhere to put them. I recommend poking around a little.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 11:07 AM on November 6

It's also on Android (for free)! Woohoo!

Plus something called "FloodFill", which may be similar (and one of the Flood-It comments says FLoodFill is better).
posted by inigo2 at 11:13 AM on November 6

Every time I see a puzzle like this I think, gee, it would be neat to add this to sgt-puzzles. Then I realize that I'd have to essentially write a computational solver for the puzzle, and once you've written a program to solve the puzzle, it's never the same again. As best I can tell, Simon actually hosts that website to ruin these games for him and keep his productivity up.
posted by pwnguin at 11:35 AM on November 6

Arg, an hour gone! More!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:51 AM on November 6

Ok. I'm addicted.
posted by arcticwoman at 12:19 PM on November 6

What's the strategy on doing it in 6 moves?

Methinks that was meant to be humor.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:49 PM on November 6

I'm enjoy this. I need about 18 moves, though. So I kind of suck.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:22 PM on November 6

-ing
posted by Burhanistan at 1:22 PM on November 6

After playing this game for a while and coming back to MeFi, I can't read paragraphs of text anymore. I keep wanting to find ways to burrow in through the sides and turn all the words the same color.
posted by Tin Man at 3:38 PM on November 6 [2 favorites has favorites]

Another fun game in the similar vein is Flood Fill where you have to fill a puzzle using up to 4 colors, and the same color cannot touch. Got about halfway and then I had to go back to work.
posted by msbutah at 5:32 PM on November 6

So for Flood Fill, they basically made a game out of the four color theorem?
posted by madcaptenor at 7:52 PM on November 6

So how far can you guys get? I can't make it past the third or fourth level.
posted by serazin at 12:56 AM on November 7

It always seems to get hard at 23 (7th level)? I don't know if there is an algorithm or other code in the game, but after several levels the easy paths just don't seem to be drawn.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:15 AM on November 7

The best I got was 23 moves...trying the diagonal thing now.
posted by nile_red at 8:24 AM on November 9

Is there a way to skip ahead? I'm tired of blowing through 30-29-28-27-26-25 just to get to the hard ones. I know, I know, I could just pretend I have N less moves left than it says I have ...
posted by intermod at 9:18 PM on November 16