Planetris

A meditative audiovisual experience, with simple Suika-style gameplay.

I enjoyed this short and simple nearly-Suika game way more than I expected. There's a little something to the art style which mesmerises as the little words move around as a the centre of gravity shifts, and a very pleasing physics thunk and chain reaction as you send a new celestial object to its fate. I think it's a project so don't expect a full game - you only get the one level to beat and its not especially hard to do so, but it has some replay value and I found myself beating it a few times over to see how I can better connect and organise the planets, and the price is very fair for your playtime. Loved the success animation especially!

It feels more like a tech demo than a game. Frustratingly, it often seems like you have three planets touching but apparently there must be a microscopic gap somewhere because they're not merging. It was a sort of fun to play for a little while but I quickly grew bored and I can't personally imagine paying for this, although the price is low enough that it seems like a reasonable gamble if it appeals to you.

It might feel fine for the first round or two, but once you realize success has nothing to do with strategy, there’s no real reason to come back. This is a simple game built on Suika-style mechanics. If you’re new to the genre, the core idea is dropping balls into a container and merging identical ones to form larger balls. Each merge creates progressively bigger balls, and the game continues until the container overflows. Once balls start spilling out, it’s game over. This game changes things up a bit. Instead of a flat-bottomed container, you play within a circle governed by central gravity. All balls are pulled toward the center, and you can drop them from any point around the circle. However, the merging system is different. In similar games, combining just two matching balls is enough. Here, you need three. Also, placement matters because all three bulls must be touching at the same time. For example, a straight line of three won’t merge because the end balls aren’t connected. The best strategy is to form triangles, with two at the base and one above. This adds a layer of challenge, since balls don’t stay exactly where you drop them. Gravity might roll them away or stop them just shy of connecting. Sometimes you’ll need to nudge one with a spare ball or wait for gravity to pull them closer together. Unfortunately, the gap between balls is often invisible to the naked eye, so the game still refuses to combine them because there’s a very tiny space left between them. Another frustrating aspect is that balls apparently need to be completely still before they can merge. If you drop one onto two others, it often just bounces away instead of combining. This makes aiming and strategy pointless, since even a perfect setup can fall apart when a ball that should merge simply doesn’t. And since there aren’t any mechanics to assist you, your run is basically doomed once too many balls stack up in the center. You can’t reach them because of the merging problems, and all you end up doing is adding more unwanted balls that pile up outside your control. The ultimate objective is to create the largest possible ball. Since you can only drop the two smallest balls, every larger one has to be created through merging. There are no points or leaderboards. When a ball leaves the circle, you can press a key to clear the board and start again. It might feel fine for the first round or two, but once you realize success has nothing to do with strategy, there’s no real reason to come back.

fun suika-like! gives me tetris effect vibes, very pretty :3