The sequence goes from cherry to strawberry, grapes and satsuma orange, and then to persimmon, apple, pear, peach, pineapple, melon ... and finally watermelon.
If you immediately recognize what this means, you’re no doubt a big fan of Suika Game — which translates as Watermelon Game — a ¥240 or $2.99 puzzle video game on the Nintendo Switch that went viral this year.
Currently, it’s ranked No. 1 in Nintendo Switch software downloads, topping Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince as well as Super Mario Bros. Wonder. In addition, Suika Game was the top-trending phrase on YouTube in 2023, according to Eviry, a market research firm focused on the platform.
The Tetris-like game involves the player stacking various fruits in a box without them overflowing, similar to a popular video game in China called Big Watermelon. To prevent the cute-looking fruits from overflowing, the player must match two of the same fruit, making them form the next biggest fruit in the cycle, until ultimately a watermelon is created.
Players need to be strategic in placing the fruits, as they can't predict which fruit will drop after the next, or if a nearby fruit will pop when a merger happens. Game reviewers often describe the game as “addictive.”
“It’s like a mix of Tetris and 2048 but with adorable fruit,” Julia Lee wrote in an October review on games website Polygon. “There’s more to it than just dropping the same fruit on to each other.”
But what is surprising is that Suika Game was developed by home projector startup Aladdin X to be installed on its products.
Tao Cheng, the Chinese founder of Aladdin X’s predecessor popIn, which was a University of Tokyo venture startup, wanted his three children to spend more time together as a family with the projector — whether that was watching movies or YouTube or playing games — instead of everyone holed up in their rooms on their smartphones and tablet computers.
“We wanted to make the time spent with family more valuable,” said Takehiro Okamoto, a senior manager at Aladdin X.
Suika Game was one of about two dozen apps that the company developed — from one teaching hiragana to another for yoga classes.
To make the game available to a wider audience, Aladdin X made Suika Game downloadable on the Nintendo Switch in December 2021.
Suika Game only registered some 2,000 downloads in the two years through this summer — or an average of four downloads a day.
But in mid-September, the number suddenly increased to a dozen a day, and from there to tens of thousands a day in the span of a month.
None of the Aladdin X staff saw it coming.
“We didn’t realize until about a week after it started getting viral,” Okamoto said.
It turned out that a few YouTubers had posted streams of them playing Suika Game, with these quickly going viral. Shortly after, popular YouTubers such as Hikakin and TV celebrity Shingo Katori also started posting similar videos.
Suika Game topped 1 million downloads on Oct. 6, before hitting 2 million downloads about two weeks later on Oct. 18. About a month later, on Nov. 14, the number of downloads hit 4 million. As of Friday, the figure was about 5.17 million.
Although it was initially available only on the Nintendo Switch’s Japan store, it became downloadable in other countries in October. It is now available in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean, in addition to Japanese.
Suika Game has become so popular that there has been a proliferation of unofficial versions that can be played on websites, smartphones and tablet computers.
There are growing calls for Aladdin X to develop a smartphone app for the game, but the company was mum on the issue.
Still, Okamoto hopes to make Suika Game more accessible, not just to those who have a Nintendo Switch or the company’s home projectors.
But did the game’s popularity boost the sales of its core business — home projectors?
“I’m not going to lie — not really so far,” Okamoto said with a chuckle. “But it did increase Aladdin X’s name recognition, so that’s a start.”
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