Puyo Puyo: A Colorful Falling-Blob Puzzle and Its Story

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Text to type: Puyo is a puzzle game series from Japan. The word Puyo is the name of the pieces. A Puyo is a round, soft blob, a little like slime or jelly. Each Puyo has a color and a small face, so the game looks cute and bright. The company Compile made the first games. For many years outside Japan, the series had a different name, Puyo Pop. Today the name Puyo Puyo is used everywhere. The series is a big success. Together with the Madō Monogatari games, it has sold more than 10 million copies. Many people in Japan know the game from game centers, and many first played it at home on a family console.

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Text to type: Play is simple to learn. Puyo fall from the top of the screen, usually two at a time. You move them left or right, turn them, and drop them. The pieces land and stay. Here is the key rule. When four or more Puyo of the same color touch each other, they pop and disappear. They must touch on a side, up, down, left, or right. Touching only at a corner does not count. When Puyo pop, the Puyo above them fall down. If those falling Puyo make a new group of four, they pop too. This is called a chain. A long chain sends garbage to the other player. Garbage Puyo, called Ojama in Japanese, are gray blobs that do not pop by themselves. You win when the other player's board fills up to the top of the third column from the left.

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Text to type: The first Puyo Puyo game came out in 1991. Compile made it for two Japanese home systems, the MSX2 computer and the Famicom Disk System. The characters did not start in Puyo. They came from an older Compile game series called Madō Monogatari, also written Madou Monogatari. Madō Monogatari is a role-playing game where you walk through dark dungeons and fight monsters. Its first game came out in 1990, also on the MSX2. Arle is the main hero of that RPG world. She is a young girl who uses magic. In Puyo Puyo, Arle and the monsters from her world became the players you see on the screen. So the cute faces on the Puyo and the fighters beside the board all have a story behind them.

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Text to type: In 1992, Compile worked with Sega to bring Puyo Puyo to arcades. The arcade version ran on Sega's System C2 hardware. This version was built for two players who fight each other. The chain rule from Part 2 now became a weapon, because a big chain drops a lot of garbage on your rival. This competitive style was a hit in Japanese game centers. Sega also sold the game for its home console, the Mega Drive, and many people in Japan bought it. In 1994, Compile released Puyo Puyo 2, called Puyo Puyo Tsū in Japan. It added an important new idea. When garbage is coming to you, you can make your own chain and cancel some of it. Players call this countering. It made matches deeper and faster.

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Text to type: Compile had money problems in the late 1990s. In March 1998, Sega got the rights to Puyo Puyo. From that time, Sega owned the series. After 2001, a Sega team called Sonic Team started to make the new Puyo Puyo games. Sonic Team is famous for the Sonic the Hedgehog games. Now the same team made the little blobs too. In 2003 they released a new game. The game was called Puyo Puyo Fever in Japan and Puyo Pop Fever outside Japan. It added a new rule called Fever mode. When you counter a lot of garbage, you enter Fever. The board fills with ready-made chains, and you pop them fast for a short time. The lens from Part 2 still works here. Pieces fall, colors match, and a big result goes to the other player.

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Text to type: The series kept going under Sega, and one later game became very famous. It is called Puyo Puyo Tetris. Sega released it in Japan in 2014. It mixes two big puzzle games in one. One player can play Puyo Puyo, and the other player can play Tetris at the same time, and they still fight each other. There are also modes where the two games swap during a match, or where Puyo and Tetris blocks fall on the same board. This made the game easy to enjoy with a friend who knows only one of the two games. Outside Japan, an English version came out in 2017 for the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch. For many players in Europe and America, this was their first Puyo Puyo game. The blobs from a 1991 Japanese computer game now sit next to Tetris on a modern console.

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