Suika (Watermelon) Game is so hard but I can’t stop playing – Polygon

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The watermelon game has now consumed my entire life.
The Japanese Suika Game (or Watermelon Game) has consumed my entire being and I will not rest until I beat it.
Suika Game is a Nintendo Switch game by developers popIn, and the premise is pretty simple. You have a box and you get random fruit to drop into the box. When two of the same fruits touch, they turn into a bigger fruit. Two cherries turn into a strawberry. Two strawberries turn into a grape. Two grapes turn into one of those fancy clementines with the bump at the top. The chain keeps going until you have two honeydew melons turn into a watermelon. It’s like a mix of Tetris and 2048 but with adorable fruit.
In the world of Suika Game, it’s been universally decided that if you score over 3,000 points, you “win.” Of course, there’s no end to the Suika Game. It goes on forever until all your fruit fill up the top of the box.
I learned about the game thanks to my social feeds showing me unending posts of VTubers screaming about Suika Game. They were either bragging about their high scores or lamenting their inability to score over 3,000 points.
The thing is, Suika Game is just really frickin’ hard. The game has some physics involved, so the fruit will bounce and roll around. If you drop fruit in a line, the pressure will build up, squeezing some of the fruit up or down in your box, shifting everything around in new ways. There’s more to it than just dropping the same fruit on to each other. Sometimes I’ll place a fruit and something magical happens, allowing a chain reaction of fruit combinations to occur in beautiful succession. Sometimes I’ll place a fruit and it’ll cause my huge honeydew to jump up to the top of the box, ending my run. The trajectory of my round changes on a dime from one meager cherry placement.
Never in my life have I played a game where I flipped between “Oh, it’s so over,” to “WE’RE SO BACK, BABY!” so many times. I love playing drop puzzle games like Tetris, Pokémon Puzzle League, and the like, so I’m no stranger to those flipping emotions, but Suika Game really does something to me. Maybe it’s the adorable fruit illustrations. Maybe it’s the bouncing physics. Maybe it’s the taunting desire to create a big-ass watermelon. I don’t know!
If you want to try out Suika Game yourself, there’s a simplified browser version (it even works on mobile), but the Nintendo Switch version is more in-depth, with more bouncy physics and the ability to see the next fruit you’ll need to place, allowing for more planning. However, since the Nintendo Switch version of the game is region-locked to Japan, we recommend sticking to the browser version until you’re ready to commit. If you’re ready for that, we have a guide on how to download Suika Game on Switch. Or maybe popIn will realize how big the game is getting and it’ll get put on more region’s eShops. We can only hope.
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