POPUCOM

POPUCOM launched on Steam on June 1, 2025, a $19.99 co-op puzzle-platformer from Hypergryph, the Arknights studio, published by GRYPHLINE and Fireshine Games, casting two players as colour-switching creatures who match and shoot coloured bubbles at enemies while navigating platforming puzzles together. It sits at Very Positive, 418 to 28 across 446 English reviews, and the design itself earns that score honestly, reviewers describe genuinely creative, Nintendo-caliber level design throughout. But running underneath that praise, from launch through the most recent reviews sampled in September 2026, is an unusually loud and specific chorus reporting a severe, unresolved online connectivity problem that can make entire boss encounters unplayable.

The design praise is both broad and specific. One reviewer called it "a nice mashup of Splatoon's Single-Player Campaigns... and It Takes Two," a comparison echoed independently by multiple other reviewers, while another wrote it felt like the developers "studied up on tried-and-true level design principles from Mario," citing how mechanics are safely introduced and then explored across each level's four-act structure. A reviewer who called it "one of the most creative co-op titles I have ever played" noted that "almost every level a new mechanic is introduced," and several reviewers singled out specific minigames, particularly "Battle for Meowtopia" and "Captain Bunnies Showdown," as standout content good enough that one reviewer wrote the developers "could easily make a full price title out of that mini-game." One recent review went as far as to say POPUCOM "kicks the pants out of It Takes Two/Split Fiction for best co-op game."

Set against that is the single most heavily and consistently corroborated technical complaint in the entire pool: online ping spiking catastrophically, specifically during boss fights, locking a player out of participating entirely. Reviewer after reviewer describes the identical symptom in near-identical language. One wrote their partner "would go to '999ms' during the fight and be unable to participate," while another reported the game "suddenly unplayable as of the 5/28 update if you are not doing splitscreen or steam remote play," with ping "skyrocket[ing] to 6000-7000ms and never com[ing] back down." A third reviewer, writing in August 2026, more than a year after launch, still reported "over 900 ping" during a boss battle. Critically, this complaint appears from reviewers who otherwise loved the game just as often as it does in negative reviews; multiple thumbs-up reviews explicitly warn other buyers, as one put it, "heads up to not end up like the people in all the negative reviews," recommending local play or Steam Remote Play instead of the game's own online servers. That developers appear not to have resolved a boss-fight-breaking connectivity issue well over a year after launch, despite it being reported consistently the entire time, is a serious mark against a game otherwise built around online co-op as a headline feature.

A second, structural complaint concerns accessibility for anyone without an existing regular co-op partner. POPUCOM has no solo mode, no matchmaking system, and, as one reviewer put it, "doesn't offer a Friend Pass," meaning there's no way for one purchaser to bring a friend in without that friend also buying the full game. Reviewers repeatedly noted this narrows the audience considerably: "if you have good friends, you'll have endless fun. But if you have bad friends... you won't enjoy this game at all," as one put it, while another straightforwardly recommended waiting to buy "untill they add either [singleplayer] and/or matchmaking." The four-player Party Mode fares little better in reception: one reviewer detailed that most Party Mode missions "last about 1 minute or less," with some resolving automatically without real player input, while another noted certain unlockable costumes are locked behind Party Mode content that specifically requires three or four simultaneous players to access, a real barrier given the game's already narrow two-player-minimum audience.

A smaller but recurring thread comes from a minority of reviewers who found the underlying match-three mechanic itself thin over a full playthrough. One detailed critical review argued "match-three just doesn't have enough depth to carry a full game, so late game puzzles all feel identical n most enemies are just lazy reskins," predicting it would be "Hypergryph's last buy-to-play title." This view is very much a minority position in the pool, most reviewers who played the full campaign describe consistently escalating creativity rather than repetition, but it's detailed and specific enough to note as a genuine dissenting perspective rather than dismiss outright.

A handful of smaller quality-of-life complaints round out the picture: one detailed reviewer spent weeks requesting an inverted mouse Y-axis option that still hadn't shipped by their most recent update, calling it "beyond frustrating" for a feature "that has been around since a million years." Another reviewer, who otherwise finished the roughly 25-hour campaign and loved it, noted the price made it hard to justify asking three or four friends to buy in just to unlock the full Party Mode content, writing "the price of the game was too high for friends to invest into." These are real friction points, but neither comes close to the severity or frequency of the netcode complaints, and both were raised alongside genuine praise for the core experience rather than as reasons to avoid the game outright.

POPUCOM is, on pure design merit, one of the more inventive co-op puzzle-platformers reviewers in this pool have played, drawing earnest, specific comparisons to Nintendo's best multiplayer work. But an unusually large and persistent share of its review pool, spanning its entire release history through the most recent reviews sampled, describes a boss-fight-breaking netcode problem that the developers do not appear to have fixed, on top of real structural barriers for anyone without a steady co-op partner. Worth buying and playing locally or via Remote Play with someone you already game with regularly; a much riskier purchase if you're relying on the game's own online servers to hold up during a fight that matters.