Puzzle! Mushihime-Tama

Puzzle! Mushihimetama is a 2005 puzzle game developed by Cave and published by AMI. It is notable for being the only non-shooter released on the CAVE CV1000 hardware. Puzzle! Mushihimetama is the spiritual successor of the 1998 Cave game Puzzle Uo Poko. The game is also unique among Cave releases for having a song play during the attract mode, “Reco de Singing.”

The objective in Mushihimetama is to save the Kojuu trapped underneath a bed of colored stones. Reco shoots colored stones one at a time into the play field. A cluster of three or more stones of the same color will result in those stones being removed from the play field. Once there is an opening for the Kojuu to escape the level is complete.

Every five stages results in a boss battle in which Reco must continually fire stones of any color onto a specially marked spot on the boss to prevent it from escaping out the top of the play field.

There are two multiplayer modes available, cooperative multiplayer which makes its return from Uo Poko as well as a new head-to-head multiplayer.