Popucom Blends Two Unexpected Genres For One Fantastic Co-Op Shooter
Color chaos reigns in one of the year’s best multiplayer games.
When you think of a multiplayer shooter, you’re probably not picturing bright colors, cute outfits, or flying cat robots, but that might be different if you’ve played Popucom. First released in June 2025, the unique co-op shooter came to Switch in December, bringing an unlikely mix of combat and match-3 puzzles together for one of the best multiplayer games of the year.
At first glance, you could mistake Popucom for Splatoon, another great game that turns typical shooter tropes on their head. The colorful world and doll-like characters of Popucom bear a lot of resemblance to Nintendo’s own cutesy multiplayer shooter, but the games could hardly be more different in practice. Where Splatoon is a competitive battle for control of its stages, Popucom is cooperative, with up to four players working together across a series of extremely clever platforming stages.
Popucom’s boss battles let its unique match-3 shooting shine.
What makes Popucom so unique is how it combines shooter and match-3 mechanics, which shines in its two-player story mode. In every stage, each character can swap between two different colors with the push of a button. You’ll see your active color reflected in your outfit, and when you fire your weapon, you’ll launch a blast of the same color. When you come across the game’s blobby enemies, firing a shot of the same color will actually spawn another enemy of the same color instead of defeating them, and linking three identical foes will cause them to disappear. The same logic applies to colored blocks around the environment, letting you match three of the same color to clear them, or stack different colors together to form larger platforms.
Combat reaches its peak in Popucom’s boss battles. Bosses consist of massive clusters of different colored blobs, requiring you and your player two to coordinate your shots to take them down as they launch waves of their own attacks back at like, turning the game into a candy-colored bullet hell.
Multiplayer puzzle-solving is a blast in Popucom.
Where Popucom really shines, though, is in its puzzles. Color is key to Popucom, with stages full of platforms and barricades in the same color as your characters. You can safely stand on platforms of your own color or pass through lasers that match you, so you’ll need to constantly swap your color to make it through each level. Teamwork is also essential, with the first few stages introducing you to all the tools you’ll need to use to help each other out. A shield lets you block lasers of the same color to keep your teammate safe, and it can also be turned into a platform to carry them over hazards or let them reach higher ledges. Another device turns you into a bomb, which can clear obstacles and roll through tight passages. The best and strangest of them is a cat inside a flying saucer, which you can use to carry away enemies or lift obstacles to make new paths.
Despite its friendly appearance, Popucom is no walk in the park. It never tips over into being frustrating, but its puzzles require quick thinking and quick reflexes in equal measure as you work with your partner to navigate its dangerous, colorful world. It’s the kind of multiplayer game that requires you to be in constant communication about how you’ll get through the next puzzle, making it perfect for couch co-op, or for playing online while voice chatting.
It’s been a good year for multiplayer games in 2025, with intriguing newcomers like Peak finding popularity alongside more popular mainstays. Popucom deserves to be recognized among the best multiplayer games around, with its original combination of genres making it the most surprising co-op game I’ve played all year.
