Aloof

aloof is a cute animal-based tetris battler where blocks are not falling, you can move them around (not just horizontally and downwards) at your own pace. there's rotating in both directions, hard and soft drop (both land immediately, but after a soft one you can still move the piece), the board can be cleared (flushed with water) anytime, as well as flipped to place stuff on the back without screwing up the front. and unlike pretty much every other tetris, this one doesn't show the next piece.
voyage (story mode, solo or 2-player co-op) mostly has you creating various shapes that'll turn into islands so the bunny (or bunnies) can keep going. facing is important, so if it's an 'L', creating it upside down won't count. 37 levels in various locations, no timer as such to worry about, but there is combat against the ai. its speed can be changed and at 0 enemies don't move at all, which is nice if you're not into the whole battle thing the game is mostly about and just want to puzzle in peace.
win conditions depend on the individual level and what's available there, but with enemies involved it's either creating all the shapes (islands) before them, destroying all their islands, or knocking them out on their ship. by creating a shape, it starts charging, and if it's not interrupted by someone else creating it again, it'll turn into an island after fully charging, or can be instantly charged by making the same shape again. that said, focusing on the enemy is a viable option even on more puzzle-oriented levels. in fact, most achievements are based on how you deal with your foes.
matching 5 or more of the same color makes tiles disappear (doesn't have to be a straight line, L-shape or whatever works too) and also attack by creating a wave, but if the enemy doesn't have a health indicator, it won't make any difference. shields withstand any attack and quickly recharge after each, and since waves are slow and creating consecutive matches as fast as you can still won't be good enough, cascades (combos) are the key to a successful offense. initially I found this annoying and wished for slower recharge speed or faster waves, but it's actually pretty cool that the game emphasizes the puzzling aspect and planning ahead over quick actions.
it's also worth noting that the bunny doesn't have any health, only his ship and the islands, and if the latter are present, they can be healed by recreating their shape regardless of the bunny's position. and just as importantly, making the shape of an opposing island breaks their shield until the next attack, providing an alternative to lining up a series of matches before triggering them.
back to puzzling, an essential mechanic I overlooked at first is sticking same-colored blocks together. free movement and soft drops allow for block placement that would otherwise require different colors or cascades/combos. simply moving a piece next to another won't count as placed, but pushing it against the other one will connect them in that position, even mid-air, though if only the top piece gets connected, the bottom one will continue falling (same with connecting a vertical piece).
this technique is crucial on some levels with tricky shapes, as well as rescue missions. they can be really frustrating, as stranded bunnies have very little health, so a single hit (as in, one match that isn't a required shape) knocks them over while you're trying to create islands for them, so cascades are out of the question.
lovely graphics, pretty good audio, especially the ambient effects, and settings include resolutions, windowed mode, vsync, separate volumes, but no mouse support, nor keyboard rebinding. level selection is finicky with only one world on-screen at a time and all the left-right navigation necessary to find something, but level numbers got patched in at least.
I enjoyed the game, thanks to the ai speed setting (and some clarifications from the developer) I could complete the campaign, and I'm sure more skilled individuals will appreciate more hectic combat as well, not to mention multiplayer against ai or real opponents, offline or online. the price on release was a bit high at 12.49 eur, though nowhere near some other similar games (and it got lowered to 4 eur in 2022), but it'll probably never have as many players as those more popular ones either. if you're only in it for the single player like myself, or have friends to play with, unlike myself, it's worth at least trying the demo and going from there.

If you like puzzle fighters (i.e., Puyo Puyo Tetris, Puzzle Fighter itself, or games like Marvel Puzzle Quest), give Aloof a try. It has nice art and music, but more than anything it's just very well designed. It also rewards strategic planning with its combo system. Since the pieces don't automatically fall down, it has a different feel than games like Tetris, but the battles can still be extremely intense. In fact, by letting you adjust the speed at which the AI plays, this game lets you choose between a more relaxed experience or a highly competitive twitchy experience. I always like games like this, but Aloof feels like a unique breakthrough in a genre that's still in its fairly early stages.

This is a very good block puzzle game for fans of the genre. It is something like Puyo-Puyo, but the shape building mechanics make it stand out quite a lot from that. I wish there was more content in the game; I beat the singleplayer campaign in a few hours (though there were a couple of good puzzle levels in here that stumped me for a little while), and the vs. AI mode has 3 levels with AI speed the only difficulty setting. The co-op campaign is pretty much just the singleplayer campaign again, and the multiplayer VS has 5 levels (I think?) to choose from with fixed shapes available in each. Of course the worst issue is just that it's currently pretty obscure so there's never anyone online to play with, you'll have to pre-arrange a match with a friend.
I really like this game, but I have a wishlist of features for it:
* More content in the campaign mode
* More customizability in the VS mode (levels with a semi-randomized shape selection, levels with unique restrictions or goals, matches that have a progression of levels instead of best of 3 on the same level, etc)
* Different match-ups, like 1v1v1v1 instead of just 1v1 and 2v2, with a mix of players and AIs and Humans, such as H & A vs H & A, H & H vs H & A, H & A vs A & A, HvAvAvA, HvHvHvA, etc
* Some kind of handicapping system in VS mode, so players of differing skill levels can reasonably compete
* Maybe a puzzle race mode, where the health mechanics are ignored but you race to claim something like 7 shapes first with 2 or 3 available at a time maybe
I have a bunch more ideas but anyway the game is great, I just wish there was a lot more of it :)

An excellent puzzle fighter.
Sets itself apart from others of the genre with unique game play in the level of control and how you can manipulate the blocks when setting up groups of 5. Not much in the way of a story beyond what you pick up from the levels of battles and puzzles you encounter. That said there is a lot to take in as the art is detailed and interesting. And the music brings it all together fitting the levels and situation in battles.

The game is wonderful.
In addition to the super immersive soundtrack and beautiful arts, it presents a nice level of progression and difficulty that makes the game challenging, but even if you happen to need to repeat the same phase 10, 20 times, it still doesn't get tiring. The system is simple to learn, but difficult to master.
If you like puzzle games, I highly recommend Aloof to you.

Aloof does have a similar gameplay to Puyo Puyo, but the goal differs. The game will ask you -more often than not- to draw a pattern, almost like a picross game. The catch being, if you match too many tiles, they will disappear and ruin your shapes. Some levels can be brute-forced but the rest is pretty chill. It gets cheap when it goes on sale, and while being on the short side of things, is trying something different, so I would recommend if the genre is something that you enjoy.

fun, fresh, polished puzzler. feels great to coordinate builds and combos in co-op, and the head-to-head mode offers a lot of deep strategy thanks to the unique (yet intuitive) building and health mechanics. try the demo, the game does a great job of teaching you all about how its played. overall a fantastic buy for action puzzle fans, specifically puyo puyo, and also for people who want to like puyo but find it a bit overwhelming.