Spirit Trail

One of my favorite Nintendo DS games of all time was Puzzle Quest. Simply take the match-three gameplay of Bejeweled and add RPG-style mana pools, attacks, and boss fights. It was one of the first “add RPG elements to a different genre” games I remember really enjoying, long before it became the norm in basically any current-era live service game. Spirit Trail simplifies the Puzzle Quest formula and transports it to Japan.

Instead of fighting traditional Western fantasy creatures like orcs and imps, you assemble a small team of three fighting creatures and battle one of eight different yokai, each with their own special abilities. Each of the six characters you can choose to be on your team has their own ability, too, and it’s activated by matching enough of its corresponding shapes in a battle against the yokai. To activate the samurai frog’s ability, for example, you match enough lilypads to fill his little bar, then he slashes the enemy yokai multiple times with his sword.

Depending on which yokai you’re battling, they’ll have different abilities like a spider yokai that traps you in its web, or one that reverses the controls, or one that puts a timer on your moves. They’ll also be attacking your team with standard attacks every so often, and the yokai symbols on the board are the ones you don’t want to match (easier said than done!). The trick as you get deeper into the game is to find team members that complement each other, but you’ll also contribute to your completion percentage by beating each yokai with each of the different characters, so you have to try them all.

There’s no experience system from one battle to the next, and there’s no penalty for failure. This lets you try different teams and abilities without fear. There’s one creature’s ability in particular that seems much more useful than the others (clears the yokai symbols from the board and deals damage for each), so I ended up utilizing that one on nearly every team, but the others are balanced enough to encourage experimentation.

It’s not a very long game, especially compared to the weeks I played Puzzle Quest in the mid-aughts, but the puzzle action that is largely untimed is a nice way to spend a few afternoons as you figure out how to best damage the enemy yokai while keeping your team safe. It’s cozy! And it teaches you about some of these monsters from Japanese mythology. Perfect straightforward riverside game for a vacation, especially while dreaming about going back to Japan and playing your Playdate on one of THEIR riversides.

(Released May 20, 2025, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)