No haiku or hive goals or any of this today. No today we do something completely different.

I don't write about games very often, but I want to introduce a new game called the suika game.

I don't do many casual games. It's not that I don't enjoy them, but I know how addictive these things can be and I'd rather not be fighting the urge to play Angry Birds or Candy Crush or something when I need to be doing work or otherwise could be enjoying being with my kids. The fewer addictive things I allow into my life, the better.

That said, this one slipped in. My youngest introduced it to me. One day he came home from school and immediately ran into my office and told me that I needed to download Suika Game to the home iPad. Suika means Watermelon. I had no idea what he was talking about but agreed to look after he did his homework.

Later I did a search in the app store and was a bit overwhelmed. The search results contained many many many related games: "Watermelon Merge", "Fruit Merge", "Watermelon Game", "Daily Fruit Merge" and so on. A Google search told me that the original Suika Game was made by Aladdin X, so I found and downloaded that one.

It's not a bad game. There are a number of fruits, starting small and moving larger, with cherry being the smallest and watermelon being the largest. Two small fruit merge into a bigger one. Sounds simple, but you rarely get the two fruit you need in a row, making it tricky to arrange everything. Fill up your play area with too many unmerged fruits and you lose.

It's a fun game.

From what I understand it was released on the Switch and no one really cared. Then last year some popular streamers showed it and it exploded from there, becoming one of the most popular eShop Switch games. From there it started to be released on smartphones and became even more popular and then crossed overseas and started exploding in popularity outside Japan too.

Anyway, my son was happy and he enjoyed playing it. I have played it here and there since, but am not allowing myself to play much. Again, I want to avoid addiction. But if you are less disciplined than me—have at it! Just search "suika game" in your app store of choice. The official one from Aladdin X costs some money, but there are many clones that are free (but probably have ads). Pick your poison and try it out!

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.