Puzzled

Puzzled is a falling-block puzzle video game developed and published by SNK that was released for Neo Geo arcades in 1990, on the Neo Geo home console in 1991, and the Neo Geo CD in 1994.

The visuals of Puzzled look a lot like Tetris and the core gameplay is the same: the player controls tetriminos falling from the top of the screen, and filling a horizontal lines clears it. However, the objective is to clear a vertical path for a hot-air balloon initially trapped at the bottom of each level, enabling it to fly off the top of the playing field and moving up to the next level of a tower.

The tower is divided into multiple floors, with 10 levels per floor, totaling 60 different puzzles. Some levels feature varied obstacles like robots floating around the puzzle to attack the balloon, regenerating blocks, and gold blocks that need to be cleared multiple times before disappearing. The player can also use a power-up called an “L-Ball”: a meter fills up as lines are cleared, and once ready, the player can trigger a lightning ball to explode outwards from the balloon’s current location, removing surrounding blocks.