What does popping bubbles in the club have to do with saving the solar system? I’m not sure, but when you figure it out please let me know. YUSO, is a game about popping bubbly faces while getting a bit of a story from the planetary gods — help us unnamed hero, you’re our only hope.
Similar to other matching puzzle games, YUSO ask you to pop colored bubbles that are adjacent to other bubbles of the same color. Simple enough in concept there are a few wrenches are thrown in for good measure to keep it interesting. You progress through the different planets of our solar system by completing the stages in each planet. You don’t have to complete a full planet to continue however, you just have to complete the required number of stages to unlock the next planet. Along the way, you will get a bit of prose from that planet’s god? I think? Or are they just the humanoid embodiments of said planet? Is that the same thing as a god? That’s not important I guess, but what is important is that the Venus character was male. That was a bit of a head scratcher.
As one would expect the puzzles get increasingly more complex as the game proceeds. The wrenches I mentioned earlier take the form of sleeping YUSOs that need to be awoken by popping others that are near by. Bombs will also start to appear in later levels. When you’ve taken the number of turns shown on the bomb, it will explode and change the colour of any YUSO within range. Nightcaps have a timer as well. When the limit is reached, adjacent YUSOs will fall prey to the sleeping spell and then work like the square sleeping YUSOs. These added pieces all nicely increased he difficulty curve while making my way through the game’s 80+ levels.
This is a fun puzzler that provides enough challenge to keep it interesting. Overall the game plays as you would expect, but I did find that the design language took me a bit to get used to. I understood what I needed to do to progress but found at times that it was hard to judge if the YUSOs were close enough to each other to initiate a pop. I realized over time that there is an area of effect on the pop that would take care of YUSOs at a bit of a distance, but you couldn’t initiate that pop from the edge of the range. I found this frustrating at first but organically began to understand the limitations of this design and then adapt.
If you like color matching puzzlers, you’ll like YUSO. The Switch is a perfect device for this type of pick up and play game. If you get frustrated with a puzzle you can quickly put your Switch to sleep andtake a break. When you come back refreshed it’s so quick to get back into that you’ll be progressing before you know it.
If you ever figure out the lore of this world and what the YUSOs ever did to make you want to pop them, please let me know. I’m really curious!
[yasr_overall_rating] 4/5
I played a digital copy of YUSO that was provided by PR. If you have any questions on our review scale please see our About page.
