Hands on with Puchi Puchi Virus on DS

When Earth gets bombarded by an extraterrestrial virus, instinct dictates you whip out a DS and start tapping the infection out. But of course.

Puchi Puchi Virus, the first Nintendo DS title from publisher NIS America, combines peculiar characters with addictive puzzle gameplay for a uniquely entertaining experience. It's a little tough, but sharp as a syringe nonetheless.

As the story goes, the arrival of the Puchi virus from outer space incites Dr Kevin Longfellow into action. The young doctor, with the help of his nurse Honeydew, works to find a cure to save people being transformed into bizarre creatures.

The single-player examination mode demands destroying a set number of virii infecting a patient within a given time limit. The hilarious docket of patients includes the punny Salmon Ella, rockster Jackal-Ampturn, and alien-looking Doll-R. There are around a hundred in total, our favorite of which has to be rooster Cluck Norris. As you move further down the list of patients, the severity of infection increase and you have to work harder to clear stages.

Stages play out on hexagonal grids spread across the touchscreen. Virii pop up in the hexagons lining the grid, appearing in a wide range of colours from blue to green to pink. Your objective is to destroy enough virii to rid a patient of infection. Doing so requires triangulating like-coloured virii to clear them from the board. By tapping three virii in a triangle, you can destroy the trio. It's a simple concept, but one that lends itself to some challenging gameplay.

Since virii constantly appear, you need to move quickly to destroy them. In the earliest stages, the rate at which they show up is slow, but that soon changes in advanced levels. Leaving virii alone for too long causes them to congeal, becoming a greyed-out fixture on the grid. The only way to clear congealed virii is to capture them within a triangle and destroying them along with a triumvirate of active virii. You don't want to catch a coloured virus within a triangle, though, as it'll congeal instead of disappear.

With me so far?

Should the board get cluttered with too many congealed virii, you can administer medicine by tapping the pill icon on the upper left left corner of the touchscreen. Congealed virii return to normal, but you'll still need to clear them from the board. For every 50 virii you destroy, you earn a pill; each additional 50 you clear enhances the potency of the pill to restore more congealed virii. (Thank goodness for pills because the game is rather tough to play and without them I wouldn't have been able to make it through the few stages I tried.)

With virii rapidly popping up on the board, destroying them quickly becomes quite challenging in later stages. Not least because virii move about the grid. Creating chain bursts helps to clear them, though, and reduces the rate at which they congeal. You instigate a chain burst by creating a triangle with one corner set within another triangle (the virii don't have to be of the same colour). Once both triangles have been set, destroying one triggers the destruction of the other.

Puchi Puchi Virus also comes packed with head-to-head multiplayer in addition to the 100-plus single-player stages. Both single- and multi-card play are supported, as well as demo download. Meanwhile, multiplayer versus battles play out like single-player stages, although creating chain bursts increases the rate of infection for your opponent as a bonus.

Including single-card play is a great move, yet from what I've played I'd say this clever and challenging puzzler looks to be worth purchasing come its release in July. We'll have a review for you then.