Aggretsuko

Aggretsuko is a fun and casual puzzle game where players take on the role of Aggretsuko, tasked by Director Ton to design offices that meet the needs of each employee. Players engage in a fun match-3 game, carefully observing the patterns on the screen, tapping to move and eliminate them to score points. High scores complete levels, and the stars earned unlock different office decorations, earning the satisfaction of other colleagues. The game features numerous characters to choose from, each with unique skills; selecting the right character for each level makes achieving high scores easier.

Characters of Aggretsuko:

Retsuko: A 25-year-old red panda in her company's accounting department who lets out frustrations over her job by singing death metal at a karaoke bar. She is an amiable introvert who suffers from social anxiety, and is prone to unrealistic dreams to the point where it negatively impacts her and those around her. After Retsuko bad-mouths her boss, Ton, on TV, Ton nicknames her "Short-Timer" (Japanese dub) or "Calendar" (English dub), implying her job is on the line. When confronted with a new problem, personal or otherwise, she quickly retreats to a corner and tries to resolve the issue alone, if she does not outright surrender. This shows that her emotional maturity is lacking, and she is reluctant to confide in others. However, she slowly develops a healthier emotional state with help from her friends and, ironically, the co-workers she often cannot stand. By Season 3, she goes fully public with her death metal singing, thus beginning a lucrative side hustle.

Director Ton (トン): The domestic pig director of the accounting department, who constantly gives Retsuko a hard time through blatant sexism or overwork. He spends significant time practicing golf instead of working, though it is shown that he is an incredibly skilled and speedy accountant despite being tech illiterate. Though he regularly belittles Retsuko, it is implied that he greatly respects her, and possibly sees her as his successor. He has more than once stepped into her personal life with timely wisdom to save her from situations that are causing her grief. In spite of his toughness, he has a soft spot for his family, and initially hides from them the fact that he was forced to quit his job in Season 4. He is also protective of his workforce, refusing to fire anyone in the accounting department when incentivized to do so by the new president.

Fenneko (フェネ子, Feneko): Retsuko's fennec fox co-worker and closest friend in the office. Highly perceptive and insightful, she is able to deduce anyone's mental state through mere observation of their habits and deviations from their usual patterns: namely, through scrutinizing others' social media. Cynical by nature, she often openly criticizes something only to later enjoy it, sometimes to an obsessive degree. She also has a close relationship with Haida and an unusual rivalry with Tsunoda. She has a highly distinctive, monotonous laugh.

Haida (ハイ田): Retsuko's mild-mannered, 27-year-old spotted hyena co-worker, who is in love with her. His roundabout approach to confessing his feelings puts him in many comical situations; in many ways, he shares the same social anxiety and confidence problems as Retsuko, resulting in poor communication with her. Despite being rejected, he struggles to move on and continues to pine for her, often reacting badly whenever she goes out with someone. However, he does give Retsuko space to keep himself in check, and genuinely cares for Retsuko's well-being and happiness. Haida is an avid punk rock fan, and plays bass guitar. Haida is skilled in programming and IT work, but his work is frequently dismissed by the tech illiterate seniors in Accounting, leaving him frustrated. In Season 4, Haida is suddenly promoted to Accounting Director but later quits the company altogether after being forced to partake in financial fraud.

Gameplay of Aggretsuko:

The gameplay in Aggretsuko involves solving match-3 puzzles in order to get stars. The puzzle design is adorable; we will play with the heads of office characters and with office materials. In each level, we will have to reach the set goal before running out of movements. As per usual in this kind of game, if we manage to join three or more blocks we will get a power-up that will help us destroy more pieces.

We will be able to use the stars to buy items to decorate the office and choose the type of ambiance we want to create. However, we will also be able to opt for automatic decoration and just concentrate on the puzzles. The goal is to create off-the-wall ambiances on several floors of a building where, in the end, no-one works (except for Retsuko).

Meanwhile, as we progress we will be able to unlock excerpts of chapters from the Japanese animation series. Whether we have seen the anime or not, we will have a whale of a time watching the cute Retsuko let off steam by singing death metal. And all we need to do is download the APK file!

Useful Tips of Aggretsuko:

Theres the daily 1000 coin ad

the 700 coins ads (5 of them daily)

spend diamonds on hearts / lives to play more games and earn more coins.

after every successful game, when retsuko pops up with the stars, there's actually a small green 'button' with the option of watching an ad to earn 1200 coins. its a daily thing, so its not available with every completed level!! its also available for the special 3 daily missions and past stages so make sure to watch the ads for those every day.

really rare but there is actually a coupon code you can check now and then. i rmb there was a coupon code you could key in to redeem a special ticket to unlock a character, but unfortunately its expired.

you can try to replay past levels! for example, in the earlier stages, you probably didn't have good characters (starting with only retsuko and washimi) so when you progress and get better characters you can go back and redo the incomplete levels. the higher the number of stars, the more the amount of coins you get. but i wld recommend grinding the current levels first because you get your hearts refilled with each successful level completed, unlike going back to a previous stage (which doesn't give you a new heart).

regarding characters, i highly discourage using the ones that destroy random areas cos at low levels, the area destroyed is small and you have to destroy more coloured blocks to use the skill. i highly highly recommend unlocking warabida, the tea cup filler wallaby, ookami, the flower pot destroying fox, chief komiya the box destroying meerkat, director ton who destroys ice cubes and tadano in suit / detective fenneko who can destroy target blocks. the rest of the characters that destroy selected areas like the horizontal / vertical type are good too, but these characters are really the ones who save steps:-> earn more stars!! the worst are the ones that add more steps, or change block colours, unless its max level retsuko haha (since you get a retsuko token everytime you finish a level so its easy to level up retsuko).

recommend using the 10 / 30 / 60 min infinite hearts to grind the special 3 daily challenges, passing difficult stages and going back to redo a stage 8. when you finish a floor (like the building floor) remember to claim the 30 000 coins! 9. for passing levels in general, when you fail there's actually a hint button after the failed stage that links you to a youtube vid. for some reason when you use the 'correct character' the stage makes you magically succeed lol. i think you can search for the levels on youtube if you're stuck at one. however, they stop giving vids after stage 500 iirc so if you're at much higher stages then it wldn't help.

additionally there's the bomb ad which works sometimes (cos they place the bombs randomly and theres diff bombs), the continue for 5 moves advertisement etc.

make friends to get hearts from them. just delete those friends who haven't been playing the game for a long time e.g last seen 5 days ago so you can get new hearts everyday!

(for future limited edition theme releases): save up way in advance haha. i totally splurged on getting new characters and had to suffer from waiting for my coins to accumulate.

Player Comments of Aggretsuko:

Retsuko herself is a bit more than just a stand-in for us to relate to with our own jobs, made obvious by the fact that I doubt most of us scream heavy metal in a karaoke parlor every night. Though that’s probably because karaoke parlors aren’t as common in Canada and the US as they are in Japan… That said though, as an audience surrogate, she’s a fairly clean slate, aside from her nighttime habit and her simple desire to just be happy with her job.

She hates her job but doesn’t really have any future plans for advancement in the company or any desire to actively find another workplace that might be less horrible. The only thing that she does to make herself happy is carry around a dedicated microphone, which we assume gets a lot of daily use.

Along with Retsuko in her crappy office job, there are other friendly coworkers like Fenniko and Haida. Haida is the guy who low-key crushes on Retsuko hard, but she’s mostly oblivious to his advances. This is mainly because his advances are so subtle most people would need an electron microscope to notice them, poor guy. Then there is the sociopathic Fenniko, who in contrast is about as subtle as a brick through a window, though not necessarily in public. She’s the one who won’t attack you to your face but will instead stalk you and try to ruin your life through social media. She also has a laugh that could stare into your very soul. Though these characters are quite similar in their disdain for their workplace, unlike Retsuko, neither of them gets to the point where the job continually beats down on them. Because they have Retsuko, the office pushover, the good and reliable worker for the company who won’t rock the boat regardless of how much she wishes to complain, and: as someone who would do the exact same thing: this is all relatable as fuc.

The downside to both her blank nature and the fact that she’s a Sanrio character is that her existence relies upon good marketing and being a character who is unchanging even as the decades roll by, so she can’t really develop as a character at all. Sure, we see what her existing personality would do in a variety of situations and: for this short 10-episode season with only 15 minutes per episode: it works out fine. But if a next season is to be produced, we might have another Konosuba on our hands, where jokes and situations get recycled for the sake of additional content without developing beyond the status quo.

That said, there is still plenty of entertainment to be had with her as she is. She’s the perfect mascot for the modern disgruntled office worker in this quirky and much more lightweight series, and it’s lightweight in more ways than one.

The animation is not much to write home about. This is a series that sticks very firmly to the model set by the individual character’s designs and doesn’t have much wiggle room as far as what the characters can actually be animated to do. Now to make up for this, everything is supplemented by both the show’s soundtrack and its vocal cast.

The soundtrack itself is fun and upbeat, but constantly repetitive. With the exception of anything in the heavy metal genre, there are only a few songs that get reused throughout the entire series and they are repeated at length so much that you’d think we’d get tired of them eventually. Unfortunately for us perhaps, the majority of those few tracks are earworms, digging into your subconscious, making you listen to them as you progress through your own everyday life. Or maybe that’s just me.

Its vocal cast, in both languages mind you, adds a bit to the charm of each of the characters. Erica Mendez swaps between the upbeat diplomatic tone that Retsuko normally uses as a mask, to the much more flat “I’m so done with this crap…don’t talk to me” that she sports when she’s alone. And Katelyn Gault’s Fenneko still has the subtle sarcasm that made her character memorable to me, while also keeping her laugh.

Final Verdict:

In Aggretsuko, there are all kinds of challenges, from taking office photos to collecting important documents scattered across the screen. Each level has a new set of objectives that you have to meet before you can advance.In this puzzle-based game, your mission is to earn enough stars to redecorate rooms and construct new floors in a building where nobody does their job. Gameplay is pretty simple: just combine three or more identical pieces to reach certain objectives.