“I def got a little tendinitis in my hand from too much Switch lmao,” one of my close friends wrote. I wasn’t surprised, unfortunately. Just a few nights before, I asked her to join me for Valorant, but she declined. She was lying down in bed playing a “goofy puzzle game” on her Nintendo Switch, about to pass out.
I was intrigued. She said the game was called Suika, but I had never heard of it before. When I mentioned it to another close friend, she told me the game had recently gone viral among VTubers. There was even a little competitive scene around the game, with streamers trying to outperform each others’ high scores.
Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I downloaded Suika Game onto my Nintendo Switch. Suddenly, my lunch break was gone from my Friday afternoon. Just a few rounds in, and I was already addicted. Who would’ve known that a cheap, cute little puzzle game with anthropomorphic fruit would steal away my work day?
So, what exactly is Suika Game?
Suika Game is a simple, single-player falling shape puzzle game. It’s a bit like Puyo Puyo meets Tetris, except players combine round, smiling fruits to create an even bigger fruit. The game starts with an empty container, where players can drop fruits to the ground. Match two similar fruits together, and they’ll turn into another, bigger fruit. Players are incentivized to keep matching fruit after fruit, as this frees up space inside the container, allowing strawberries and grapes underneath to pair up and turn into grapes and dekopons, respectively.
The game keeps going until a fruit spills over the container’s edge, ending the run and recording the player’s score. Here’s an example of the game in action after hitting 1,000 points:
Suika Game, and the concept behind it, isn’t exactly new. In 2021, a Chinese developer came up with the concept behind Suika with a free online minigame, Synthetic Big Watermelon. This iteration had no music, no adorable little faces, and a far more rudimentary physics system. The game offered global score tracking, but it simply showed the percentage of players the user had beat at the end of the game.
Nonetheless, Big Watermelon inspired the Japanese company Aladdin X to create its own iteration of the game for its popIn Aladdin projector. Sensing Suika was a hit, Aladdin X later brought the game over to the Nintendo eShop in Japan in December 2021. Then in 2023, Twitch streamers took notice of the game. VTubers and non-VTubers alike began competing against one another, and by fall 2023, Suika Game became so popular that Aladdin X decided to release the game internationally.
Since October 20, 2023, anyone with a Nintendo Switch can grab Suika Game from their respective Nintendo eShop.
Is Suika Game on PC?
Unfortunately, if you want to play Suika Game for yourself, you’ll need a Nintendo Switch. Aladdin X hasn’t launched an official port yet on any other device.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of Suika clones out there, including multiple PC iterations on Steam. There’s even a free web version of the game you can play right in your browser. While writing this article, I also found a Touhou Suika clone, a multiplayer versus Suika game, and even a 3D Suika Hololive fan game. Personally, my favorite unofficial iteration is Suika World, a free, browser-based clone which matches the aesthetic and physics of the original Switch game pretty well.
If you’re interested in trying Suika for yourself, I highly recommend picking up the official game on Nintendo Switch. It’s only $2.99, it has an online ranking system, and it even features adorable music and graphics. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to turn my Nintendo Switch back on and try to beat my high score.
(featured image: Aladdin X)
Published: Dec 1, 2023 04:34 pm