Suika Game Planet is a whole new world of fruit merging

Looks like melon's back on the menu, boys

The fruit phenomenon Suika Game, which swept up puzzle fans’ attention in 2023, has made a triumphant return with Suika Game Planet, an official sequel that shakes things up with all-new physics. The overall goal remains the same: combine fruits into increasingly larger ones, ideally creating a watermelon. However, it eschews the fruit basket setting players are accustomed to; instead, this entry is an intergalactic exploration of gravity on a circular stage.

Players can now fire fruits from any direction, filling up a planet that allows for 360 degrees of combination. This is the major distinction between Planet and the previous title, and while it may seem like a smaller detail, it completely changes the strategy. Players who previously felt they’d mastered an understanding of how to drop their fruits in just the right way are now in a whole new ballgame — well, melon game, I suppose.

Instead of only having to worry about fruit rising to the top of the basket, bypassing any bit of the border of the planet is now a losable offense. The edges can stretch a little, but any fruit that pokes too far outside the barrier means game over. The physics feel very different: Fruits will float about and tend to slowly move toward the middle, although — and I can’t confirm this — it seems like larger evolutions have more sway in attracting fellow fruits, sometimes causing dire shifts. This means that you aren’t just managing combinations, but ever-shifting gravity.

Another mechanic that shakes things up is Super Evolution, a temporary bonus mode that triggers after enough combinations fill a meter. Players are incentivized to make as many fruit matches as possible in the time allotted for extra points, a mechanic that stands out in a puzzle game where players are used to taking their time. It’s a fun way to inject some extra excitement into the game, and players aren’t punished for not engaging with it if they’d prefer to stay methodical.

Suika Game Planet is still just as obsession-worthy as its predecessor, but its controls should have evolved along with the puzzle setting. I acknowledge that this is partially a skill issue on my part, but my natural assumption was that I would rotate the analog stick around its axis to aim my fruit around the circular arena, but that is not the case. Instead, the controls are solely left and right, and I have lost track of how many times I have accidentally gone in the opposite direction because my brain defaulted to moving in a circle — it just feels very unintuitive.

My only other gripe is that there are very little multiplayer options. There’s no online option, only local GameShare, and that only includes a simple co-op mode. To be fair, Suika Game released its multiplayer functions as a separate paid DLC, and Planet could very well follow suit.

Suika Game Planet retails at $3.75 for the Nintendo Switch 2 version, and $2.99 for the original Switch. For such a low price, it's absolutely worth it for fans of the original game looking to give a new style of fruit combining a go. Even for puzzle players who missed the Suika Game trend, Suika Game Planet is a delightful follow-up that’s absolutely enrapturing enough to justify its small price tag.