Suika Game: there’s a reason this weird watermelon game is one of Nintendo Switch’s best-selling titles

It’s always the way, isn’t it. You’ve got an ever-expanding Steam backlog that you’ve barely made a dent in since 2014, several consoles full to the brim with untouched AAA delights, three subscription services whose delights you can never quite find the time for, and a bunch of annoying grown up stuff to do as well, like washing the dishes and making sure the wean isn’t rolling around in the cat litter. Etcetera etcetera. And yet, you can easily waste six hours per night on any dumb mobile puzzle game with a bubblegum art style and a clever hook. Maybe that’s just me. Either way, this week it’s すいか がめ. Or Suika Game, in Romaji. You can play a scrappy lo-fi free version on browsers, or a premium version is now available on Nintendo Switch for (sorry about this, but SEO is SEO) the price of a Pumpkin Spiced Latte (christ, sorry). The Switch version is best because the art is better, the little faces on the fruits are animated, it doesn’t have ads, and the physics are dialled up so significantly that they’re a lot more useful during gameplay. Previously, getting the Switch version outside of Japan was a faff, and it didn't get an English translation until recently either. But yes, physics, you heard right. This is essentially 2048, that old tile swiping puzzler where you had to match number blocks together to multiply them, but instead of numbers it’s an assortment of fruits. A salad, if you will. And instead of a tile grid, it’s a Tetris-style vertical drop affair with a rudimentary physics engine. Essentially, you’re chucking groceries into a bag. Reach the top of the screen and it’s game over. Reach the top of the fruit chain by making a watermelon, and a fanfare erupts, tickling the pleasure centres of your horrid little ape brain and compelling it to remain committed to this insidious frivolity instead of doing something useful, like inventing fire or clobbering a mammoth to death. Read more