Puyo Puyo Tetris

Puyo Puyo Tetris is a crossover of Tetris and Puyo Puyo, a mainstream Japanese puzzle game which provided the engine for Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Kirby's Avalanche, published by Sega. It has been released for the 3DS, Wii U, Playstation 3, and Playstation Vita. It is the first game in the Puyo Puyo series to ever have DLC. On January 12th, 2017, Sega announced that Puyo Puyo Tetris would be localized and released in the Americas and Europe for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, making this first game since Puyo Puyo Fever to do so.

Differences from Other Games
The side bars are not an indicator of incoming attacks; incoming lines are shown on the top in Puyo form, while the side bars are reserved for visualizing how much attack power you store. This game has a Puyo-style story mode, a feature absent in many other Tetris games.

Characters
These new Tetris characters are named, very directly, from the Tetrimino that they're based on (Tee is based on the T mino, Ess is based on the S mino, and so on). The only exception to this is Ex, who seems to be named after a Pentomino. Voiced by Kaoru Mizuhara (Japanese), Tee is the main protagonist, and the king-to-be of the tetrimino planet, replacing the previous king Ex. Because of this, he traveled to other worlds to train his ability. He first meet Andou Ringo, the protagonist of Puyo Puyo 7, when she accidentally got transported to the Spaceship Tetra along with Amitie, Arle Nadja, and her bunny-like sidekick and pet, Carbuncle. He became fast friends with her after a friendly battle and learned about Puyo Puyo battle from her. He initially helped them to clear the Tetriminos that were covering up both Ringo's and Amitie's world. In the end, he and the others eventually stop the problem and finally depart. It's hinted that he gained a crush on Ringo, mainly in the epilogue.
 * Tee

Tee's sidekick and the controller of the spaceship. He is often with Tee due to his job. He makes friends with both Arle and mainly Carbuncle, and just like Carbuncle, he only speaks one word, 'Bi'. He is the Tetris mascot character. Voiced by Miina Tominaga (Japanese).
 * O


 * Ess
 * A rude girl, and supposedly the youngest in the Tetra crew, who is voiced by Yui Horie (Japanese). She first met with Amitie, who was trying to find Ringo and Arle, eventually befriending her after a not-so-warm welcome. Just like Amitie, she has a child-like personality, and when she is in trouble she often cries. She also calls Zed her Papa due to his big body, despite he is in truth a robot.


 * Ai
 * An alien dog who is the smartest group of Tetra crew. Despite being the smartest, he is easily scared, and makes dog-like cries each time he gets scared, mainly when Jay and Elle toy him around for entertainment. He is the engineer and the scientist of the crew. He is shown to bring a diamond-like device to divine things. He is voiced by Yuki Tai (Japanese).


 * Jay & Elle
 * Trouble-making fraternal twins who often toy Ai around, Elle is a girl while Jay is a boy. They both love making trouble for the crew, mainly Ai, by calling him "Wan-Chan". They often speak together, and often fight each other, mainly when they lose in a Puyo Puyo or Tetris battle. They are both voiced by Miyuki Kathleen (Japanese).


 * Zed
 * The robot guardian of the Spaceship Tetra. He a is large, round robot who obsessed with body health. He is first encountered when Arle and Carbuncle got separated from Ringo and Amitie, and thinking that she broke in, started attacking them, but eventually stops. He is very loyal to the crew, and he doesn't know Ess calls him "Papa" due to his big body. Ryunosuke Watanuki (Japanese) voices this character.


 * Ex
 * The king of Tetrimino planet, voiced by Kazuki Yao (Japanese). He is mysteriously missing from the planet in order to fix the Tetris portal that broke due to its instability. He encountered O in the Primp town battle place. He is later encountered again in the road to the Tetris portal, and later in the Tetris portal, which is shaped like a door. Although they almost fail to repair the portal, two previous game antagonists, Satan, with his power to control darkness, and Ecolo, with his power of time traveling and space manipulation, helped repair the portal to its normal state. He finally departed with the Tet space crew when it was fixed. He has his own chapter in the downloadable content, which focuses on him getting out of his dream.

Modes

 * The story mode, named Adventure Mode, is a master story line spanning 7 chapters each with 10 stages. Each stage is either a battle with a COM player or a single player challenge. An additional 3 bonus chapters can be bought as DLC, playing through the mode unlocking additional alternative voice clips, backgrounds, and Puyo and Tetris skins.


 * A "Challenge" tab contains other game modes such as Endless Fever, Mini Puyo, Marathon, Sprint, and others.

Versus
The basic battle rule. In this mode, it is possible to make a match between Puyo Puyo VS Tetris (as in the title of the game itself) not to mention Puyo VS Puyo, and Tetris VS Tetris. The Tetris side does not work differently from modern multiplayer Tetris games. A match can start even with players choosing different modes.

In Tetris vs. Puyo matches, attacks on the Tetris side are altered. A meter on the side is presented that stores the attack power you create with green, and will only be sent to the Puyo opponent when a Mino doesn't clear lines, making a delay on the attack. This meter is especially noticeable when a Tetris combo is in play; if enough power is built, the meter begins to overlap itself with yellow, then red. Significantly high power is represented on the Puyo side with a warning icon and chime after each power-adding move. If Puyo combos are cleared during the Tetris power storage, the Puyo attack can be weakened or even nullified immediately if enough power has already been stored.

Swap
In Swap mode, you have two play fields: one W6H12 field where Puyo fall, and one W10H20 field where Minos fall. Every 25 seconds (as shown on the timer) you must toggle between Puyo Puyo and Tetris. The game does not wait for the current piece to finish dropping before swapping, and the current piece will continue to drop (without player control) after the swap. Clears started before the change can combo with furthers clear in the current field, creating extra damage, for example, clearing a long chain while in wait for an I to fall and score a Tetris.

Big Bang
You can play as Puyo or Tetris in this mode. The Puyo Puyo player is in Fever mode, and the rules are according to Endless Fever mode; premade chains fall from the top of the field, and you must either set it off, or extend it slightly for a better score. The Tetris player has "Lucky Attack", where you must clear pre-made patterns often by employing SRS Triples. After a set period of time, the timer stops, and compares the points the player has made. The one who made fewer points receives damage from the other, shrinking the health bar. A player is eliminated when their field is completely shattered, and the last player standing is the winner.

Party
This mode challenges players to get the highest score within a set time limit. Players can still send garbage to their opponents. An item block (1x1 in Puyo, 2x2 in Tetris) will fall into a random position, with an icon showing its potential effect. If a player clears the item block with a line clear or and adjacent Puyo clear, the item will either aid the player (i.e. deflecting attacks or helping clear garbage) or hinder the opponent (i.e. temporarily disabling rotation or obscuring portions of the field in darkness.) If a player tops out, the field is reset and points are taken away from their score. The one with the most points at the end of the time limit is declared the winner.

Regarding Puyo, character choice affects the Puyo patterns you will place in the field.

Fusion (Puyo-Tet-Mix)
Definitely the most chaotic and hardest-to-learn game mode of the whole game. Fusion mode takes place in a playfield of W8H16, an average of the W6H12 Puyo field and the W10H20 Tetris field. Both Puyo and Minos fall in the field. The dropset consists of eight Puyo drops (post-Fever), two Tetriminos and one special drop, which can be a piece that switches repeatedly between Puyos and a Tetrimino, or a golden 1-to-2-block Tetris piece.

Mino appear to trump Puyo in sheer mass. If a Mino lands on Puyo, the Mino will begin to press downward until it lands on the floor or atop another Mino. Any squashed colored Puyo will reappear after the action is settled. Squashed garbage Puyo do not reappear, making Mino an effective way to clear out clutter.

Like in the respective games, Puyo clear by attaching four of the same color together, and Minos clear by making a full horizontal line. While these clear, you can quickly play your next piece and clear something else. The best means of attacking your opponent depends on consecutive clears of Puyo and/or Mino via rapid and consistent action; take too long to make a clearing move and the active chain will reset.

Endless Fever
Pre-made combo setups appear on the field, and a timer constantly ticks down. Clear Puyo with the aim of making the intended combo (or longer) play out. Doing this adds seconds to the timer and presents another combo setup, typically more complex by one combo step. Failure to perform the intended combo will present a less complex combo setup. A perfect clear will provide a much more complex combo setup than normal, allowing greater scoring opportunities sooner. The mode ends when the timer runs out.

Endless Mini Puyo
Similar to Endless Puyo, except Puyo are much smaller. The field is W10H18, with the two topmost center spaces marked; covering one of these spaces ends the game. Unlike Endless Puyo, the character you choose affects the Puyo patterns that drop onto the field.

Marathon
This mode uses the fixed goal system. The player can achieve high scores before clearing 150 lines. For every 10 lines cleared, the level will increase.

Sprint
Achieve best times in clearing 40 lines.

Ultra
A 3 minute mode where the player must achieve high scores.

Controversy
Most Japanese fans were excited by the announcement of the crossover, while some cautious ones thought that it would break no new ground, and instead even harm the series by replacing some playable Puyo Puyo characters with Tetris characters to make room for these new characters. This game is the first ever Puyo game to have DLC, while many fans loved the Puyo series for being a DLC-free haven.

Some overseas fans have wished this game to be ported worldwide, but others disagree that the Puyo series is not known enough abroad to make the crossover work without any misconceptions (e.g. Puyo is a Tetris spinoff). It was also originally unlikely that Sega would be able to acquire rights to publish a Tetris-branded game in non-JA territories on XB1 / PS 4 due to these rights probably being held exclusively by Ubisoft (publishers of Tetris Ultimate) for the time being. Coming spring 2017, this game will be released in the Americas and European regions for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

Images
The default Mino skin:



Definitions

 * A Line clear is called Single, Double, Triple or Tetris (Quadruple) depending on how many lines are cleared at once.
 * A T-Spin occurs if a T piece is locked and the last movement was a rotation (including potential kicks) and the T piece locks in a place where at least 3 of the 4 squares diagonally adjacent to the T's center are occupied (3-corner rule). If both squares adjacent to the T's middle finger are occupied (the 2 squares already regarded in the 3-corner rule), then it's a regular T-Spin. If the T piece was kicked down 2 rows during the last rotation (and also 1 column to the side), then it's also a regular T-Spin. Otherwise, it's a Mini T-Spin which is far less valuable than a regular T-Spin.
 * Neo T-Spin is the only way to kick a T piece 2 rows down but not towards any side (not 1 column left or right). It is considered as a Mini T-Spin. It is also the only way to get a Mini T-Spin Double. Fin T-Spin and Iso T-Spin count as regular T-Spins (see T-Spin Double article for Neo, Fin and Iso T-Spins).
 * Back-to-Back (b2b) means the process of making some high qualitiy line clears in a row with no inferior line clear in between. High qualitiy line clears means Tetrises and T-Spins here (including Mini T-Spins). The first high quality line clear starts the b2b chain. Every further high quality line clear will receive a certain bonus (+50% points, +1 line sent in versus). Every inferior line clear will break the b2b chain. To clarify, it's not needed to make a combo to get a b2b chain going. T-Spins that don't clear any line don't profit from the b2b bonus.
 * Combo is the process of making consecutive line clears (clearing at least one line with each piece placement multiple times in a row). Each further line clear increases the combo counter by 1. The second consecutive line clear is called 1 combo, the third consecutive line clear is called 2 combo, and so on.
 * Perfect Clear (PC) is the state of getting a completely empty board after a line clear.

Scoring

 * Soft drop and Hard drop score 1 resp. 2 points for each row the piece falls down during that process.
 * All other points (see table below) are multiplied by the current level. In Versus the multiplier is usually 3 (if handicap is left on medium).
 * Mini T-Spins score 100 points on top of the regular points for that line clear (thus 100 points for no line clear, 200 points for a Single, 400 points for a Double).
 * Back-to-back Tetrises and T-Spin line clears score 50% more points than usual, combo and PC points excluded. For example a back-to-back Tetris scores 1200 points instead of 800 points or a Mini T-Spin Single scores 300 points instead of 200.
 * Combos are worth some bonus points on top of the regular points for that line clear. It's 50*X points for reaching an X combo. For example, the second consecutive clear (1-combo) scores 50 points and the third consecutive clear (2-combo) scores 100 points. To clarify, you get the bonus points each time the the combo counter increases. You get 50 + 100 = 150 bonus points in total for making 3 consecutive line clears.
 * Perfect Clears are worth some bonus points on top of the regular points for that line clear (and combo). These bonus points depend on how many lines you clear at once (e.g. 800 for a Single, 2000 for a Tetris). For example a 2-combo Single-line PC is worth 100 (Single) + 100 (2-combo) + 800 (PC) = 1000 points. Also note, that a b2b Tetris ending in a Perfect Clear scores even more points than a non-b2b Tetris: It seems it's 4400 points in total which means 3200 bonus points.
 * T-Spins have the highest scoring efficiency per cleared line. 4-wide combos and Perfect Clears can't compete with techniques like ZT stacking or Infinite TST in Marathon and Ultra.



Tetris vs Tetris (Versus)

 * Lines are sent by clearing lines. Singles only sent lines during a Combo or when a Perfect Clear occurs.
 * Back-to-back Tetrises and T-Spin line clears sent 1 more line than usual.
 * Mini T-Spins send just as many lines as the line clear itself, unless they get that +1 line back-to-back bonus.
 * The game uses the same combo table as Tetris Online Japan / Poland.
 * Perfect Clears always sent 10 lines. No additional lines are sent when clearing multiple lines at once or when a combo is going on.
 * There's no garbage blocking (thus garbage may be inserted during a combo). However, there's garbage countering (incoming garbage lines are cancelled before garbage is sent over to the opponent)
 * If more than 2 pending garbage lines are inserted at once, then there's a big chance that 2 lines above each other will have the garbage hole in the same column (about 73% for each pair). However, it's unlikely (only a 10% chance) that the topmost inserted garbage line has the hole in the same column as the garbage line above (if there is any).



Tetris vs Puyo (Versus)

 * The game waits with sending lines to the opponent until a combo is finished. All lines sent during a combo are summed up and the result is converted into a number of Puyo trash.
 * For example a 1-combo consisting of 2 b2b Tetrises are worth 5 + 5 = 10 garbage lines which are converted into 28 Puyo trash. If thoses Tetrises were made seperate, then each of them would send 10 Puyo trash, thus 20 Puyo trash in total.
 * The Tetris part got nerfed in newer versions. Tetris is probably still stronger than Puyo but the Tetris part got dumbed down. Instead of changing the Tetris garbage lines to Puyo trash conversion table, the creators decided that some line clears should sent less lines than usual. While Perfect Clears are still overpowered, T-Spin Triples aren't really worth executing anymore (a TST sends as few lines as a Tetris, but is much harder to execute, also note the slow soft drop speed). T-Spin Doubles are also pretty weak, and probably only worthwile during downstack or if combined with a Tetris in a combo. Combos got nerfed a lot. 4-wide is no option unless combining with a Perfect Clear in the end.
 * A Perfect Clear sends 9 lines instead of 10. A T-Spin Double sends 3 lines instead of 4. A T-Spin Triple sends 4 lines instead of 6. Lines sent by a combo only increases every 4th combo counter.
 * For low damage attacks, it's better to go for two seperate attacks than combining them in one combo. For example a 1-combo consisting of 2 Doubles just sends 5 Puyo trash, whereas 2 seperate Doubles send 8 Puyo trash in total. Also note that 2 attacks are often better than one because the Puyo player must be idle for a second or so during the trash-raining-down animation.
 * After a certain amount of time ("margin time") attacks send more lines (e.g. a Tetris sending 6 lines instead of 4) to ensure that matches don't last too long (although it's not really needed here). Note that Tetris vs Tetris doesn't use this mechanics.
 * Beside the relatively little attack power of T-Spins, Tetris vs Puyo appears similar to playing Ultra. Good Puyo players wait with sending garbage lines over to the Tetris player until they have a deadly attack prepared. So, the Tetris player must focus on making b2b attacks (and Perfect Clears in the beginning) to stop a deadly attack from happening.



Swap Mode

 * Swap mode uses the Tetris vs Tetris line sent table for the most part.
 * When the playfield switches, pending garbage lines are converted into Puyo trash. The conversion table is different from the one for Tetris vs Puyo, rewarding much more high quality line clears. For example a T-Spin Triple sends 21 Puyo trash in Swap mode whereas it's only 8 lines in Tetris vs Puyo Versus mode.
 * When converting pending garbage lines into Puyo trash, garbage originating from different line clears are not combined into a huge attack. For example uncountered Tetris into b2b Tetris sends 9 + 15 = 24 Puyo trash and not 45 Puyo trash (that's what you would get for a single attack that sends 9 lines)
 * A Perfect Clear seems to send 10 lines before the playfield switches but only 9 lines afterwards (when the last active Tetris piece falls down beyond one's control). However, T-Spins send lines as usual, if the T piece locks after the switch.

