Sweet Drop

Why we made it

In autumn 2023, Suika Game spread through streams in many countries. You drop fruit, it rolls and bumps into other fruit, and matching ones merge, setting off chains. Soon, look-alike games lined up in the app stores. In early November that year, 4 of the top 5 free games on the Japanese App Store for iPad, and 3 of the top 5 for iPhone, were apps imitating Suika Game (AUTOMATON), and Aladdin X, the maker of Suika Game, had issued its own warning on October 2 (AUTOMATON).

The more look-alikes piled up, the more our questions narrowed to one. How do you put a variation on a rule everyone already knows? Rather than stopping at swapping the fruit for something else, we decided to change the rules inside the bin one at a time — gravity, the hand, time, the opponent, the goal. Sweet Drop started from that question.

We changed the look to desserts. Desserts with faces — donuts, blueberry muffins, puddings — bump into each other and merge in the bin. But the real variation comes after that, in the rules inside the bin.

A crowded genre, a few scenes

Games about gathering identical things into something bigger are beyond counting. It is hard even to line up who came first and what followed what. Here we touch on only a few often-told scenes.

Spry Fox’s Triple Town (2010) was a game where three patches of grass become a bush and three bushes become a tree (Wikipedia). Threes!, from February 2014, was a 4×4 puzzle where matching numbers merge into their double; it went through sushi, chess and monster themes over 14 months before arriving at numbers, and won an Apple Design Award that year (Wikipedia). A month later, 2048 — a web game a 19-year-old Italian developer made over a weekend — drew more than 4 million visitors in under a week (Wikipedia).

The drop-and-merge kind spread widely in 2021. In January that year the Chinese web game 合成大西瓜 (“synthesize a big watermelon”) appeared, and Suika Game, inspired by it, came out in April for Aladdin X’s projector in Japan and in December for Nintendo Switch. From around May 2023 it began spreading through streams by Japanese VTubers, reached streamers abroad by September, and launched worldwide on October 20, 2023 (Wikipedia).

Downloads grew to 1 million on October 5, 2023, 4 million on November 14, and 11 million by October 2024 (Wikipedia).

Put this many games side by side and “what did it change” stands out more than “which came first.” Triple Town placed things and gathered threes; Threes and 2048 slid and merged; Suika Game dropped and rolled. On the same skeleton of merging, the board and the hand changed. A variation is not a copy — it is choosing what to keep and what to change.

What we kept, what we changed

Merge matching things into something bigger, and it ends when the board overflows — we kept that skeleton. Next to the games above, it looks like this. Then, in each mode, we changed one rule.

• Classic — the baseline. Tap to drop desserts and merge matching ones. Stack past the dotted line and it’s game over in 3 seconds.
• Zero-G — we changed gravity. Desserts drop on their own, and tilting your phone moves them that way. If one floats out the top, it’s game over in 3 seconds.
• God Hand — we changed the hand. Desserts drop on their own; drag one onto a matching dessert to merge. You push them around, so they can’t pass through each other.
• Order Rush — we changed time. Orders pour in two at a time, and every 5 seconds mold or ice drops in. Drag mold out of the bin; ice melts when you merge beside it. It speeds up every 5 seconds after the first 10; the goal is 100 seconds.
• Duel the AI — we changed the opponent. Play Order Rush against the AI; whoever overflows first loses. Choose Easy, Normal or Hard.
• Story — we changed the goal. Instead of a score, you make the dessert each customer orders, from set ingredients.

A dessert shop story

In Story mode you are the owner who has just opened a dessert shop at the edge of Sweetdrop Village. A small shadow shows at the door, and the animal friends arrive as the first customers.

Every customer orders something different. The first, a chick, wants 1 Choco cake made from 3 Shortcakes. With the ingredients set, you can’t just drop anything anywhere — the moment you think about what to drop where, merging becomes a puzzle.

From the Grand Opening through the Fruit Festival, Blossom Festival, Slime Knights, Bubble Bay, Windy Day, Old Bakery at Night, Festival Again and Winter to the Final Battle — 10 worlds with 20 orders each, and 600 stars to collect.

We hope it’s a game where the bin gets a little sweeter with every merge, and where finishing one round makes you curious about the next order.

From solo puzzle to versus puzzle

Falling puzzles you play against someone else have a long-standing name: Puyo Puyo, released by Compile in October 1991. Four or more puyo of the same color connect and pop; when the puyo that fall in afterwards pop in turn, the chain sends garbage puyo pouring onto the opponent’s side. It came to arcades with Sega in 1992, the series’ rights moved to Sega in 1998, and Puyo Puyo Champions, built around tournament play, came out in 2018 (Wikipedia).

This year Puyo Puyo stepped onto the Asian Games stage. At the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, held September 19 to October 4, Puyo Puyo Champions became an official esports medal event (One More Game), and in the event, contested by players from 12 countries, Korea’s Kang Dong-shin won silver (Inven Global, iNews24). A 35-year-old game showed that a falling puzzle can be a sport, too.

Sweet Drop is looking down the same road. We are researching ways to widen the merge puzzle into a versus game, and as a first step we added Duel the AI. You play Order Rush against the AI by the same rules, and whoever overflows first loses. You can choose from three levels: Easy, Normal and Hard.

We hope this taste of playing the AI leads, someday, to a round between people.

How to play

• Tap the screen to drop a dessert.
• Matching desserts merge when they touch.
• Check Next at the top to see which dessert drops next.
• Stay stacked past the dotted line for 3 seconds and it’s game over.

Sources — Triple Town (Wikipedia) · Threes (Wikipedia) · 2048 (video game) (Wikipedia) · Suika Game (Wikipedia) · Puyo Puyo (Wikipedia) · SEGA Becomes Official Supplier of Asian Games 2026, 2026-04-07 (One More Game) · 11-Year-Old Japanese Puyo Puyo Prodigy Sets New Asian Games Record (Inven Global) · 뿌요뿌요 챔피언스 강동신 은메달, 2026-09-27 (아이뉴스24) (in Korean) · Suika Game plagued with bootlegs, 2023-11-01 (AUTOMATON) · 『スイカゲーム』の偽物が登場, 2023-10-02 (AUTOMATON) (in Japanese) · Game screens captured 2026-10-03