Nazo Puyo: Arle no Roux

Overview

Nazo Puyo: Arle no Roux (sometimes romanized as "Aruru no Ruu") is the third entry in the Nazo Puyo series, a set of Puyo Puyo spinoffs that has the player completing various challenges instead of battling opponents in head-to-head gameplay. Unlike the previous entries in the series, Arle no Roux includes an adventure mode, where various Madou Monogatari characters give heroine Arle Nadja challenges to complete. The game modifies many of Nazo Puyo's game rules, and received a graphical overhaul that would later be used in the Game Gear port of Puyo Puyo Tsu.

A remake of Arle no Roux is included in Super Nazo Puyo: Rulue no Roux.

Gameplay

There are two modes in Arle no Roux: Nazo Puyo and Toko Puyo. Toko Puyo is the Endless mode of other Puyo Puyo games, where the player matches Puyo until their third-from-left column is filled.

Nazo Puyo is the main mode. Players take control of Arle Nadja, who walks around a city and receives challenges from other characters. Each challenge consists of several pre-made boards, each with a condition to fulfill and a list of Puyo that are available to Arle. Unlike the previous Nazo Puyo games, which would endlessly give the player Puyo after all of the preset pairs were dropped, Arle no Roux will "damage" Arle once she has run out of Puyo; the challenge then restarts.

As a reference to the Madou Monogatari series, the number of retries that the player has remaining is determined by Arle's facial expressions. She appears cheerful at first, but will become more distraught each time that she fails. When Arle grits her teeth, the next failure will result in a Game Over. Arle's status carries over between challenge sets, and can only be improved by leveling up. Several orbs are placed on the screen (again, a reference to Madou Monogatari) and fill whenever Arle completes a challenge. When all of them are full, Arle becomes cheerful again, replenishing the player's retries.