Do you ever come across a game that in some way or another ''blows up'' popularity wise and just... get it? Like, a game that a first may seem like a weird or uncommon choice for having such an online presence but then play it and you can only say ''Oooooooooooooooooooh... So THAT'S why!''.
I say this with no ill intent whatsoever, quite the contrary; sometimes a game just so happens to hit the right notes to spread like wildfire, and while this effect can be and has been manufactured, there are others in which it's more of a direct result of the nature of the game itself or the circumstances around it, some games take years before even being put under the spotlight; such is the case of this little bringer of desperation called Suika Game. Of course there’s an asterisk on that, since what really popularized the game was the very recent Switch release and its subsequent explosion in the streaming landscape, which is what brought it to my attention in the first place, but even back in 2021 with the original browser release, all of the elements that make it what it is were already in place: a highly addictive, cutesy looking puzzle game.
Many of its ideas and even presentation are nothing new, but I’ll be damned do they work so great; it’s a joy to the eye and everything is clear from the get go, you simply combine fruits with faces to form other kind of fruits with faces… except bigger! The concept itself couldn’t be simpler, but it does hit many of the right notes: the focus on physics and collision makes getting chains or simply getting lucky manage to feel so incredibly satisfactory, sometimes a well-placed strawberry can make the difference between creating that sweet coveted watermelon or losing miserably. That alone makes it a treat, a really fun gameplay loop that makes you go want to keep trying and go back time and time again, all to see if you can get and even better chain and score, but that sweet spot has a really ugly side, since it’s part of the same coin… and by that I mean that sometimes this shit is sometimes so luck dependent it’s not even funny.
You simply cannot predict nor adapt at some of the things that are thrown at you, which isn’t something I can’t say about the best puzzle games of this style, but here the RNG is not only ever-present, it’s egregious. You are only told of the next singular fruit that will spawn next, and that’s only now that we are lucky, in the original web-browser English version you don’t get such a luxury! That, plus how the collision just can decide to go completely wrong, sometimes even sending fruit pieces flying, or how the game acts weird or unpredictable if three pieces of the same type touch, that’s what makes it so luck dependent in the heat of the moment… and that’s exactly what it’s so compelling to go back to. The highs of getting a nice streak and reach crazy scores is so beyond satisfying because you also beat bad luck, and while I can praise that since at the end this is not a game to which you are gonna become literally addicted or compelled to play for hours, I cannot see as something but a glaring flaw with its design and that prevents it from being even more fun or interesting.
It's a joy to go back to in your spare time, but I’d be hard pressed to recommend it beyond that, there are far more interesting and fairly designed puzzle games, this one is more like a snack, a fruity, healthy snack that’s fun to have sometimes.
Also, this is one of those games that needs either more songs or a better loop, I really had to mute it after a while because I could feel my sanity as I heard this Winnie The Pooh baseball game sounding ass theme while trying to get oranges to touch each other. In a way it brought back memories to Super Hexagon and I would prefer those traumas to be left forgotten, thank you very much…
I say this with no ill intent whatsoever, quite the contrary; sometimes a game just so happens to hit the right notes to spread like wildfire, and while this effect can be and has been manufactured, there are others in which it's more of a direct result of the nature of the game itself or the circumstances around it, some games take years before even being put under the spotlight; such is the case of this little bringer of desperation called Suika Game. Of course there’s an asterisk on that, since what really popularized the game was the very recent Switch release and its subsequent explosion in the streaming landscape, which is what brought it to my attention in the first place, but even back in 2021 with the original browser release, all of the elements that make it what it is were already in place: a highly addictive, cutesy looking puzzle game.
Many of its ideas and even presentation are nothing new, but I’ll be damned do they work so great; it’s a joy to the eye and everything is clear from the get go, you simply combine fruits with faces to form other kind of fruits with faces… except bigger! The concept itself couldn’t be simpler, but it does hit many of the right notes: the focus on physics and collision makes getting chains or simply getting lucky manage to feel so incredibly satisfactory, sometimes a well-placed strawberry can make the difference between creating that sweet coveted watermelon or losing miserably. That alone makes it a treat, a really fun gameplay loop that makes you go want to keep trying and go back time and time again, all to see if you can get and even better chain and score, but that sweet spot has a really ugly side, since it’s part of the same coin… and by that I mean that sometimes this shit is sometimes so luck dependent it’s not even funny.
You simply cannot predict nor adapt at some of the things that are thrown at you, which isn’t something I can’t say about the best puzzle games of this style, but here the RNG is not only ever-present, it’s egregious. You are only told of the next singular fruit that will spawn next, and that’s only now that we are lucky, in the original web-browser English version you don’t get such a luxury! That, plus how the collision just can decide to go completely wrong, sometimes even sending fruit pieces flying, or how the game acts weird or unpredictable if three pieces of the same type touch, that’s what makes it so luck dependent in the heat of the moment… and that’s exactly what it’s so compelling to go back to. The highs of getting a nice streak and reach crazy scores is so beyond satisfying because you also beat bad luck, and while I can praise that since at the end this is not a game to which you are gonna become literally addicted or compelled to play for hours, I cannot see as something but a glaring flaw with its design and that prevents it from being even more fun or interesting.
It's a joy to go back to in your spare time, but I’d be hard pressed to recommend it beyond that, there are far more interesting and fairly designed puzzle games, this one is more like a snack, a fruity, healthy snack that’s fun to have sometimes.
Also, this is one of those games that needs either more songs or a better loop, I really had to mute it after a while because I could feel my sanity as I heard this Winnie The Pooh baseball game sounding ass theme while trying to get oranges to touch each other. In a way it brought back memories to Super Hexagon and I would prefer those traumas to be left forgotten, thank you very much…