A couple of years ago, a Japanese company called Aladdin X released a digital projector, and it included a fun little fruit game called Suika Game as part of its software. Suika Game was so well received by people who bought the projector that the company decided to port a version of it to Switch, but the game launched there to almost no audience response. Then, two years later, it randomly became a viral sensation in Japan after a few streamers made it popular. Now it’s quietly made its way to the eShop outside of Japan, and while it’s admittedly very basic, it’s hard to say that Suika Game lacks appeal.

Suika Game could best be described as “2048 with physics”. You drop fruit onto a board, with the goal of getting matching fruits to touch so they fuse into a bigger fruit, granting you extra points. The tough part comes in with the way that the fruits don’t neatly stack on each other. Each new fruit dropped in will roll around a bit and usually push others out of the way, often blocking access to fruits beneath it. Inevitably, this causes the board to fill up all the way and then you have to start all over.

It's an incredibly simple, yet addictive gameplay setup. There’s something quite relaxing and mildly strategic about just taking your time to plan out your fruit drops, and it can be quite thrilling when some fruit further down in the board fuses and sets off a chain reaction that travels all the way back up to the top. Over time, you get a sense of how to better optimize your placement, and it’s extremely tough to resist trying one more time when you top out yet again. [Note. After launching with all text in Japanese, an update has since added English, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean language support.]

That all said, Suika Game is also a peak example of ‘you get what you pay for’. For three bucks, it's a straightforward, score-based puzzle game that’s a decent option for when you’ve got a few minutes to kill. There aren’t any other modes or unlockables, no additional levels, and there’s only one music track that plays on repeat. The highly replayable gameplay still makes this one last for a decent amount of time, but this is about as simplistic and barebones as a puzzle game can get. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but those looking for more meat may want to go for something like Baba Is You, one of the numerous Picross games, or another Switch puzzler.

For its presentation, Suika Game uses a cutesy art style characterized by bright colors and happy little faces on all the fruits that you drop in. They don’t leave a huge impression, but the visuals at least help to keep repeated attempts pleasant. And though that one music track can get a little grating over longer play sessions, it helps to add to that cuddly vibe the developers were clearly shooting for.

Suika Game is a competent and addictive little puzzler that does a great job of executing a very simple concept. There’s not a whole lot to it, but considering it's roughly the same price as a pack of gum, Suika Game is definitely worth the cost of admission. If you’re looking for a quick time waster to add to your Switch library, we’d recommend you pick it up.

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