Here are details of everything that you can play and how to do it properly.
There is plenty to play in Arcade mode.
-You can play alone or put all real/cpu players on same team to compete for high score and reach level 100. In this mode score matters the most and it is saved to local and global Leaderboards. Beside making high score and reaching level 100 you would also try to complete many of the achievements.
-If you play Arcade mode with multiple real/cpu players on different teams you will fight each other. There are many achievements that can be completed in this mode.
You can enable Fast Drop in Variants. With Fast Drop on you can instantly drop current blobs by pressing Up. There are many other things you can change in Variants like type of the garbage, number of colors and so on.
Note: by changing Variants you can disable achievmenets. For example if you start the game with 2 colors and reach level 100 you will not get any of the achievmeents you would if you started with 4 colors which is default.
Fight against all girls and hidden character at the end. After finishing Tournament you unravel your character's story and unlock last hidden character and stage that become available in other modes.
Finish Tournament to compete on local and global Leaderboards.
You can compete on Tournament leaderboard even if you use Continues but all play times will be summed. The faster you finish it the better you are placed on the leaderboard.
Other player can take control of the CPU any time by pressing Start on their controller. But in this case you will unlock nothing at the end.
Try to win as many consecutive battles as possible. Compete on the leaderboards with the number of wins. Complete achievements.
Up to 8 real/cpu players can play together.
Note: you need to play alone to compete on the leaderboards.
Try to solve as much as possible of the 100 randomized puzzles grouped by difficulty. Puzzles are randomized from a pool of total 150 puzzles.
Puzzle mode can also be played with other real/cpu players.
Note: you can't complete Puzzle achievements if you play with cpu players.
Playing with different RULES
-Beside DEFAULT rule where you stack blobs by color and clear the groups by adding 2 or more same color stars you can also play with completely different rules that require different way of thinking and different strategies.
Main focus with default rules is to create groups as big as possible and set up combo chains along the way. All game modes except for Puzzle mode can be played with any of the rules. Many of the achievements can't be completed when playing with other than default rules and also you can't compete on the leaderboards with it. But there are some achievements created for the non-default rules.
-MATCH 4: no stars or gems. You need to connect 4 or more blobs to clear a group. Main focus with this rules is setting up big combo chains.
-1 STAR: all blobs that fall are without stars. Stack the blobs by color. Only one star is required to clear a group. Stars can only be added to the current falling blobs by pressing Up. Main focus here is to stack the groups as big as possible and as fast as possible.
Tip and tricks
-One of the biggest mistakes that new players make is that they try to clear color groups as fast as possible in order to keep clear board. THIS IS THE WORST STRATEGY! When you play like that you send very little garbage to the opponent/s when fighting and you also score least points when playing for high score.
In short, BEST STRATEGY would be to maintain one or more big color groups and clear other color groups as small and as fast as possible so you can maintain and grow the big ones. When you clear less than 4 color groups you are not releasing the pending garbage to fall on your board.
While you are building that one or two big color groups try to set up couple combo chains. Clearing big group/s with combo chains is the best thing you can do for sending a lot of garbage and scoring big points.
This is much easier said than done but with practice it becomes natural way of thinking and it makes huge difference.
-Have in mind that one random color always is dominant so try to figure it out and stack that one the most.
-When next blobs show up, there is tiny drop-delay window in which the blobs are not falling but you can make moves. Learn to utilize this in order to play much easier when the extreme speed ups kick in.
-Watch next blobs and decide where to place them before they even start falling.
Take a quick look at Monster Group achievement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU4dmpOY-do
I am planning to create more videos with detailed explanation for best strategies and tips.
Let me know what you would like to see explained in more details or what kind of video you would like to see.
Enjoy,
Endi