Puzzle games, in recent times, have become the domain of mobile platforms. We’ve seen them thrive on the likes of the App Store[1] and Google Play[2]. However the Nintendo Switch[3], which brings together a console and a portable gaming device, appears to be changing that. Puyo Puyo Tetris is a puzzle game that fuses gameplay mechanics of Tetris with Puyo Puyo. While the former is universally known, the latter is a juggernaut in Japan, but with few outings outside of the country.
Simply put, Puyo Puyo has you matching four or more circular blobs of the same colour - it's a bit like Candy Crush Saga. They have to be touching each other in a line either vertically or horizontally, and not diagonally as some match-3 puzzlers play out. When they match, they disappear (or pop as the game calls it) off the screen, adding to your points tally. You can chain Puyo together for higher scores that help you win a round.
In Puyo Puyo Tetris, you can compete in Puyo Puyo, Tetris, or both, across a host of game modes. The game actually works quite well resulting in some tense yet amusing encounters, forcing you to quite literally switch between the rules of Tetris and Puyo Puyo on the fly. Having said that, you can also practice against the CPU in Solo Arcade, and there are a number of helpful tutorials for each game mode, to help you get up to speed with this hybrid puzzler.
Then there’s the multiplayer component. You can compete in Puyo Puyo or Tetris in versus. Swap mode has you playing both Puyo Puyo and Tetris boards, which switch back and forth at regular intervals, while Fusion is...