If you’ve been hankering for some Puyo Puyo action unsullied by Tetris (not that the two aren’t a great match), then your dreams have finally been answered: Sega has announced that it will be launching Puyo Puyo Champions on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on 7th May.
Puyo Puyo Champions initially released in Japan last year under the name Puyo Puyo eSports, and, as that title implies, this latest Puyo release – which, somewhat astonishingly, is the first pure Puyo Puyo game to come west in well over a decade – is heavily focussed on competitive multiplayer, offering two distinct modes for battling.
One is inspired by the Puyo Puyo 2 ruleset, including offsetting, margin time, double rotation, and All Clear, while the other is based on Puyo Puyo Fever, and sees players offsetting trash to fill up a bar and trigger a special puzzle-like sequence which can be used to attack opponents.
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Puyo Puyo Champions includes 24 playable characters, local and online play for up to four opponents (with online divided into League matches and casual Free Play), plus a local tournament mode for up to 8 non-concurrent players. What’s more, solo blob-matchers aren’t entirely left out either, although there’s nothing as extensive as Puyo Puyo Tetris’ story mode here. Instead, there’s a Challenge mode, tasking players with achieving certain objectives.