A game where pieces fall down, and you've gotta match 'em up and make 'em go away... Nope, it's not Fun Columns. And it's not DuelTris. It's PuyoPuyo. And if you become as addicted to this game as half the people I know, you might not find yourself doing much else this year.

PuyoPuyo can be played either as a one-player or two-player game. In one-player mode, the objective is to get as many points as you can before you can before you reach the top of the screen. In two-player mode, the object is to wreak as much havoc as you can upon your opponent's side of the board to make him reach the top of the screen before you do. As a note of caution, a two-player game (at least in my experience) is usually accompanied by loud cheering, cursing and threats of vengeance. In other words, it can be incredibly fun.

The rules of the game are rather simple. As your piece (made up of two colored balls) is falling, you can move it, rotate it, or drop it however you like. When at least four balls of the same color are touching each other, they disappear. (They must be directly touching -- no diagonal matches for those Columns aficionados out there.) Depending on how many balls disappeared, a number of grey balls ("rocks") will fall on the opponent's side of the board. Rocks don't match up with anything, but they will go away if you make a set of colored balls disapear adjacent to them.

Grey rocks are very, very annoying. Therefore, you will want to drop as many as possible on your opponent. In order to do this, try to set up chain reactions ("combos"). When a set of balls disapears, causing the ones above to drop, match up, and disapear themselves, your opponent will be greeted with a whole line of rocks. If you get a triple or quadruple combo, your unfortunate opponent will find himself with a veritable landslide of rocks, and will have to spend a while trying to get rid of them.

The one-player game is very similar -- you simply get ten points for every grey rock you would have dropped on an opponent. Setting up big combos means receiving big points. However, the game starts to speed up as you play, so you have to act quickly, and not waste your time (or pieces) on small matches which aren't worth many points.

Before you start a game, choose the Configure option to see or change what the keys and difficulty level are. During a game, the following keys are also available:

Escape: pause the game
OpenApple-"Q": quit the game and return to the main menu (important!!)
OpenApple-DownArrow: lower the volume of the music
OpenApple-UpArrow: raise the volume of the music

Maybe I've told you too much. After all, the original game didn't have any documentation at all. The best way to get the hang of the game is to play it a few times. And then you might find yourself playing it a few times more... and a few times more... and more...

Yattana!!

PS: Special Easter Egg for those who remember the last Right Triangle Production!

PPS: Although this is a Freeware release, donations are very, very welcome. Please. Remember, I'm a starving college student. Send cash, checks, precious ore, small children to be sold as slaves, or whatnot to Slixter. Thanks.