Everyone’s favorite death-metal karaoke loving red panda has her own mobile game! Released on July 28th, and titled Aggretsuko: The Short Timer Strikes Back!, the game is a mix of match-3, gatcha, and decoration based gameplay. While the fact that another Sanrio franchise has a mobile game isn’t news on its own, what is interesting is that Sanrio and the game’s developers, HIVE Co., have decided to incorporate the original Aggretsuko shorts from Japan into the game. Not just one or two, but the entire 100 episodes are available in-game.
Now the catch-22 for seeing all 100 episodes is that they’re only unlockable as you progress through certain stages in the game, with Episode 100 not available until you clear stage 990. Your reward for watching the shorts is a piece of the game’s premium currency and the option for the shorts to be downloaded onto your phone. For now, this seems to be an all or nothing type of deal, with players only being able to download all of the shorts, or none of them, and switching options deletes the shorts from your phone. While this seems like a cruel way to keep players invested in the game in order to have access to the shorts, with any luck, it’s something the developers will rectify in later updates.
As far as the gatcha aspect, it’s pretty straightforward and there’s no real shortage of opportunities to obtain character pieces. Given the number of characters you can collect, there are mild character and story spoilers if you haven’t watched seasons 1 or 2 of the Netflix series. There seem to be no story or character spoilers for the upcoming season 3, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the game gets an update once season 3 releases.
All in all, Aggretsuko: The Short Timer Strikes Back! is a solid franchise tie-in game that’s easy to pick up and master. It’ll definitely keep me occupied until season 3 drops on Netflix on August 27th.
