Puzzled/Joy Joy Kid

I was not familiar with Puzzled before starting this project, but I’m really glad I found this because Puzzled is awesome.  My original intent for today’s post was to focus on a game I was more familiar with because I have some other projects I have been trying to finish and I wanted to focus on those, but for some reason I chose to play Puzzled.  On the one hand, Puzzled is awesome, but on the other hand I wish I could put more time into this game before writing this post.  I wanted to write something short today, but it’s entirely possible this post will expand out quite a lot.  

Puzzled, also known as Joy Joy Kid in Japan, is a block placement puzzle game developed by SNK.  It bears a strong resemblance to Tetris, but only a short amount of playtime reveals how different it is.  In Puzzled, players have to clear a set of levels by freeing their balloon from the bottom of the screen.  The balloon is blocked by the level’s barrier blocks, but like in Tetris you can clear lines by filling all of the space from one side of the screen to the next.  By strategically clearing lines, you can free your balloon from its captivity.  In order to make the gameplay of Puzzled work, when you clear a line, all of the blocks above the cleared line become subject to gravity and drop down as far as they can go.  This alteration changes the strategy of Tetris in some ways I didn’t entirely comprehend going in.  In Tetris you can have these compounding mistakes where messing up once can block off lower lines, and can potentially lead to further mistakes.  That can still happen in Puzzled, but there are some extremely satisfying situations where I am really close to losing but I manage to clear a line and cause a cascade of falling blocks that fill in old gaps, which clears another line and opens up even more space.  

In the right situation you can go from death throes to prospering in just a moment, which is completely exhilarating.  I think this aspect of Puzzled is a good lesson that could be applied to arcade games more broadly.  It’s a commonly accepted bit of game design wisdom that games are at their most tense and interesting when they are close.  Nobody wants to watch a Chess grandmaster absolutely curb stomp a child who just learned how to play chess.  Not only is it an extremely awkward situation, but everybody already knows what the outcome will be, and the game will fail to surprise or intrigue.  In other words, that’s boring.  When things are more even between the two players, it’s a lot more interesting because you don’t know what will happen, so you will want to watch as things unfold.  This also applies to playing games.  In Puzzled, I never had a “things are too far gone, I might as well throw in the towel” moment, so I fought to the bitter end, and had a better time for it.  All I had to do to give myself another chance is to clear just one more line, and even in perilous situations that feels achievable.  

Puzzled also has some fun gimmicks to throw out.  Some blocks take multiple line clears to remove from the board, others are permanent fixtures.  There are also some blocks that spawn more blocks over time, and traps that slow your balloon’s descent.  Because of these gimmicks and all of the different board arrangements that are possible because of them, each level has its own unique feel, which I appreciate.  Not that I got too far.  There are apparently six worlds of ten levels each, but I wasn’t able to get past the first world, even once I started putting in more quarters to continue my run.  Eventually I hit a particularly difficult level and wasn’t sure I could clear it, but I want to return to this game in the future because all of the levels I saw showed remarkable creativity, and I’m excited to see what cool ideas come later in the game.  

Puzzled was a real treat.  Even as someone who has played hours of Tetris across its numerous iterations, Puzzled was able to be a challenging experience.  In some regards it feels similar to Tetris, which made it easy to pick up.  I was even able to import my T spinning skills to get out of some tricky situations.  But it also provided enough of a twist on the formula that I had to change my approach and reconsider what should be done in any given situation, because there are times where a disastrous move in Tetris could actually be the optimal solution in Puzzled.  To use a food analogy, if Tetris is chocolate ice cream, then Puzzled is not just chocolate ice cream with nuts and marshmallows, it’s rocky road.  If you have been playing along with this project, this is one you absolutely must play.  I know I’ll definitely be playing more of this in the future.