You match colored blobs to clear them from the board, and setting up a large chain reaction sends a wave of garbage onto your opponent's side. The rules are simple to learn in a few minutes, but building big chains under time pressure takes real practice. It is built for quick, replayable matches either locally or online.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The short version
A tightly designed competitive puzzler that rewards quick thinking far more than it first lets on.
In the hands
Chain-building mechanics are simple to grasp but brutally deep to master, keeping matches tense from start to finish.
Look and sound
Its bright, bubbly presentation belies just how cutthroat the matches can get once players learn to counter.
The long haul
Best enjoyed with friends locally or online; solo content is thin, so its appeal depends heavily on having someone to compete against.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You control pairs of colored blobs called Puyo falling down a tall narrow grid, and the goal is to stack four or more of the same color together so they pop, which is the entire game distilled into its purest competitive form. The stick moves the falling pair left and right, a button rotates them, and setting off a chain of pops in a row, rather than just one group at a time, sends junk blobs into your opponent's grid to bury them. Your first ten minutes should be spent in the included tutorial, which walks you slowly from popping a single group of four up to setting off a multi-step chain, since chaining is the skill the entire game is built around.
Most of your time is spent in quick one-on-one matches, either locally against a friend or online against other players, where you are simultaneously trying to set up your own big chain while reacting to junk blobs your opponent sends your way. There are two rule sets included, a classic version and a faster tsu version with a fever mode that speeds up chain building, giving you a choice between a calmer and a more aggressive pace. Individual matches are short, often under two minutes, so difficulty is really about how quickly you can plan a chain before your grid fills up.
Session to session this is built for repetition, since the gap between someone who understands chaining and someone who does not is enormous, and the included lessons are the fastest way to close that gap. What may frustrate newcomers is that there is very little to do beyond versus matches and a basic single-player mode, so anyone wanting a story or long campaign will be disappointed. If you want the most direct, stripped-down way to learn a genuinely deep puzzle game, this is built exactly for that.