Meteos Wars is a falling block puzzle game based on the Nintendo DS game Meteos. While the basic gameplay is identical in design, controlling with a gamepad instead of the touch-screen & Stylus pair makes it a different game. It consists of a board where coloured meteos plummet towards a planet’s atmosphere. There, they form columns that the user can manipulate. The player moves a red cursor with two buttons to slide the meteos up or down. When three or more are lined up horizontally or vertically, they turn into ignited stone and are launched into space (the top of the screen) boosted by rockets. There they also catch all incoming meteos and often chain combos together. Ignitions based on vertical matches provide a more powerful ignition. As a group catches more incoming meteos, it becomes heavier and gravity pulls it down. The player can avoid that by causing secondary ignitions, either directly in the group or from below. If meteos can be lifted past the top of the screen, they fall down into the opponent’s board. The game is over when a player’s board is filled up entirely. An additional button can be used to speed up time, creating time bombs to be sent into the opponent’s board to cause an explosion. Meteos can also turn into ash and drop back down. When there is a full gauge at the bottom of the screen a planet impact can be caused. There are four types (Armageddon, Gambit, Sentinel and Tempest) each with different effects. Respectively, they lower the attack power, send more meteos while receiving less, fire a meteos missile, and fire lasers to clear away falling meteos as an additional means of defense. The single-player has three game modes: a versus battle against the computer, mission mode, and attack mode. In the mission mode different planets need to be defeated before reaching Meteo. It is possible to unlock new planets and accessories along the way. Multiplayer against a human player is available both offline and online.
