One of Nintendo’s best puzzle games is Puzzle League.  Originally called Panel de Pon and only released in Japan on the Super Famicom, it was later released in the US on the SNES under the name Tetris Attack (even though it has nothing to do with Tetris), and they replaced the fairy characters with Yoshi ones.  Later on the N64, it was rebranded Pokémon Puzzle League due to the popularity of the franchise.  And then on the DS it was just plain old Puzzle League.  Most recently, there was a version of it you could unlock in the Welcome Amiibo update on Animal Crossing: New Leaf (they should put it on New Horizons as well).  I’m surprised they haven’t made a Switch version of Puzzle League, although now you can play Panel de Pon on the SNES Virtual Console if you have an online account.  Anyway, at my old job, there was a plaque on the wall that read “If we don’t take care of the customer, someone else will” and that’s exactly what has happened here because Flipon is on the Switch (and PC, but reviewed on Switch here), and it plays EXACTLY like Puzzle League.

So how do you play Flipon?  Well just like Puzzle League, you have a well full of colored blocks, and a cursor you can move around to swap two blocks.  Do this to match three of the same color horizontally or vertically to make them disappear.  The blocks slowly rise, so if you can make matches of more than three, or perform chain reactions, you can slow down the rise for a bit and in two player mode, you can also send garbage blocks to your opponent.  If the blocks make it to the top of the screen, it’s Game Over.  And that’s pretty much how you play.

Flipon has four main modes.  Campaign is the story mode and requires you to complete stages with different missions in each one.  You may need to reach a certain score, do a number of chain reactions, or battle another CPU character.  It’s different in each stage.  Score Attack lets you play endlessly, racking up as high of a score as you can before you lose.  In Challenge mode, you are presented with a random mission and a well full of blocks.  You never know if it’ll be easy or hard.  And finally in Versus, you can challenge another player locally or the CPU.

Only problem I had with the game is that the challenge is set pretty steep.  Or rather, inconsistent challenge in the campaign mode.  One time, the first boss beat me after playing for ten minutes, but the next time I was able to beat it in seconds!  And it’s not like I’m rusty at this game because I went back and played Panel de Pon and did pretty well.  You may wonder why you’d want to get Flipon if you can just play Panel de Pon, but if you don’t have an online account, you can’t play SNES games, and you also can’t play them if you’re not connected to the Internet.  So if that’s the case, or if you just played Panel de Pon to death and want a challenge, you may want to check out Flipon.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult.  Flipon is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews