Remember Suika Game? The charming puzzler blew up late last year thanks to its engrossing fruit-merging gameplay and colourful theme (and the help of a load of vtubers to boot). While the original was only on Nintendo Switch – although technically even that was a port of a game included on a projector, of all things – plenty of Suika clones quickly emerged to fill its watermelon-shaped hole on PC. The latest Suika-like is stepping things up another level by taking its chill combo-a-thon to a galactic scale with colliding planets and suns.
Cosmic Collapse is upfront about its inspiration, dubbing itself a more easygoing Suika-like with a lighter difficulty. In place of fruits, you’ll be dropping planets from our solar system rendered in blocky pixel art. When two matching planets touch, they’ll merge into a single bigger planet, a bit like 2048, earning points and freeing up space for you to drop more planets into the frame. You’ll need to keep merging to avoid filling beyond the screen’s top line, as in Tetris, which will end your run.
The trick, of course, is to set off a chain of combos that see a load of planets level up and then glob together with a single drop. Helping you achieve that here is the lack of a timer and the power to unleash missiles to blow up planets and clear some room when needed. Those missiles will be limited, though, so you’ll still need to pick your moments carefully.
As well as the obvious combo appeal, there’s a fun bit of physics manipulation in Cosmic Collapse, as you can bounce planets around the frame with a well-placed drop and net some more extra points.
The aim is obviously to get your score as high as possible, with the game progressing to the point where you’ll eventually need to slam two suns together. Sounds messy.
Developers Apskeppet haven’t given Cosmic Collapse a hard release date just yet, but you can go and wishlist it over on Steam in the meantime.
