Puchiguru Love Live! Smartphone Game to End Service on May 31

The Love Live franchise’s success has translated across different media, such as anime, live-action concerts, record albums, and most remarkably its highly popular rhythm gacha smartphone game, Love Live! School Idol Festival, which is going strong both in Japan and worldwide.

Sadly, this is not the case for Puchiguru Love Live!, the franchise’s venture into the puzzle game genre. The game’s official Twitter account has just announced that it will close down its service on May 31 12 PM JST. Purchase of in-game items will only be until May 28 and can be used until the game’s last day. If players have unused paid items by the time the app closes down, they can apply for a refund.

What makes this news even sadder is that it hasn’t even been a year since the game was launched, as it was just released on April 24 of last year. Members of Aqours, the nine-member idol group of the franchise, even promoted the game before its launch. Sadly, this was not enough to boost the popularity of the game, as the franchise’s original game Love Live! School Idol Festival proved to be more popular still, as it has been going strong for almost 6 years.

Puchiguru’s gameplay involved tapping the characters’ nesoberis (i.e., their stuffed toy versions) to the tune of µ’s or Aqours’ songs. The player’s objective is to clear the board by tapping the nesoberis that have at least one of the same type adjacent to it—kind of like Candy Crush, or the soon-to-end-as-well smartphone game Sailor Moon Drops.

Puchiguru Love Live! was developed and published by Pokelabo, Inc., the company behind mobile RPG games Symphogear XD Unlimited and SiNOALICE.

Source: Puchiguru Love Live! official Twitter account, Puchiguru Love Live! Official website