Kumamon ★ Bomber Puzzle de Kumamon Taisou is the first videogame featuring Kumamon, the dancing bear mascot of the Kumamoto prefecture. Logically the game would be a rhythm game but the name Kumamon ★ Bomber Puzzle de Kumamon Taisou should give one giant clue to what genre the first Kumamon game is and it’s no surprise that the hugely popular flash, iOS (and DS!) puzzler Bejeweled is the game that is the main inspiration, but with fruit replacing the jewels as the source of matching.
Fortunately the dancing aspect of Kumamon is not forgotten and upon starting up the game your Mii (it automatically chooses your default Mii) and Kumamon march camply to an equally campy marchy tune before moving onto a full-on dance-off. Fortunately again your Mii is full of Tomodachi Collection/Darumeshi Sports Store cuteness and not the Tetris 3D monstrosity. Game-wise you travel around prefectures in Japan piecing together three pieces of fruit or more with more stages unlockable depending upon success.
As you progress through the stages more Miis join the dance-off (frustratingly they’re just generic Miis and not other Miis from your 3DS so no dancing President Iwata nor BriLikes) and the fruit matching involves obstacles and objectives (bizarrely including chickens for some reason probably only know to the developers – Rocket) in order to stave off repetition. Inevitably repetition does occur although the increasingly progressing challenge ensures many hours of gameplay before each prefecture is reached.
Any repetition is not the downfall of Kumamon ★ Bomber Puzzle de Kumamon Taisou, more-so the inability to move fruit more than one space at a time (unlike say Puzzle & Dragons) and fruit is only movable if a row of three or more pieces are formed resulting upon a heavy reliance on luck which admittedly is a factor in most puzzle games but where-as say in Tetris you tactically plan future moves; there is an obvious lack of tactical success in Kumamon where the fruit moving gameplay structure is ultimately inherently flawed.
From the above paragraph and from the following score it could be misconstrued for my calling the game bad and this is absolutely not the case. Similar scored games have seldomly made me smile as much as Kumamon with the quest of going around Japan, with your dancing Mii and a dancing bear one of the most intriguing and enticing videogame prospects. As well as unlocking prefectures; progression throughout the game unlocks backdrops to take photos with Kumamon although the limited 3DS camera makes this not as ideal as it sounds.
As well as the pictures with Kumamon mode there is an AR mode where Kumamon all but comes alive, but a lack of multiplayer will be a problem for many. My thoughts on Kumamon 3DS are somewhat mixed with on one side of the coin a flawed puzzler with the other being heads with a rare smily face almost throughout but being just 541 blocks, one can’t help but feel that Kumamon ★ Bomber Puzzle de Kumamon Taisou would be more appropriately priced as an ¥800 eShop title than a full-priced ¥5,040 retail game.
6/10
