• Creator: Yukana
• Twitter/X: @CPHappyFestival
• Available on: Mobile Phone (iOS, Android)
• Cost: 1980 yen (No micro-transactions currently)
• Languages Supported: English, Japanese

WWE2K might be dominating the pro wrestling game scene, but now there’s a new wrestling themed game for your pocket in the form of ChocoPro Happy Festival. Your favourite Japanese wrestling promotion based out of an old dentist’s office hits the smallest screen in the form of a series of minigames, each one centered around one of the core members of the roster – with the aim of earning enough coins from those games to collect photos of the roster.

What really makes this game standout from your standard mobile game is the art design.

All the ChocoPro wrestlers have translated well in this chibi art style, retaining their unique look and design while fitting in with the aesthetics of the mobile game. Seeing a disappointed Chibi Chie after a bad performance will push you to hit the retry button again and again just so you can rectify things. The various locations in the minigames are simple but effective, with Kirihara’s being a likely fan favorite as it reimagines Ichigaya Chocolate Square for the mobile screen.

Then there’s the soundtrack, which will encourage you to avoid muting it as much as possible. Each minigame features the highlighted wrestler’s theme music; delivering Masa Takanashi beer is made even better with Bacchus blaring or powering Sayaka up for a big elbow to her theme just feels right. The backing tracks add a lot to the enjoyment of the minigames, especially when combined with the cute visuals. Even outside of the games you’ll recognise some ChocoPro themed songs, and the original music sounds right at home alongside it.

So how are the games? Well here are the nine available:

• Mei Suruga’s Run! Apple Adventure: A run and jump platformer where you collect apples and try not to lose momentum or otherwise lose your combo.
• Sayaka’s Smiling Violence Elbow: Send a training bag flying as far as you can by pressing the button at the time to maximise the power and angle of the strike just right.
• Chie Koishikawa’s Aim! Fencing Chop: Run around the kitchen collecting various fruit as it falls from the top of the screen, all while avoiding falling weights that will temporarily knock Chie unconscious.
• Tokiko Kirihara’s Raise! Lower! Koma and Nechi! Follow the prompts on screen to correctly raise and lower Kirihara’s hands as instructed. Get through all 20 prompts as they speed up and become more confusing.
• Sayaka Obihiro’s Full Speed Run! Road to the Ring: Time your button presses to help Obihiro burst through the walls in between her and the ring, helping her get there as fast as possible.
• Emi Sakura’s Deliver the Cake to the Queen!: In front of Emi will be a plate of different types of cakes and she will think of the ones she wants. You then have to grab them and pass them to her. Right ones score points, wrong ones break your combo.
• Miya Yotsuba’s Take This Miya Hammer!: A side-scrolling action game where you fight off ghosts and birds. Time your strikes to take them out or otherwise get hit.
• Baliyan Akki’s Burst! Namaste Press: Practice hitting the perfect Namaste splash by timing your button presses to get the right mix of power, accuracy and timing.
• Masahiro Takanashi’s Sake Boss’s drinking party!: Move blocks around the game board to clear a path to pass Masa his beer, and pass him as many as you can in the time limit. Once per game, you can use a ‘shortcut’ and pass it to Chris Brookes instead.

Most of the games are pretty fun and everything is presented in your choice of English or Japanese, though not all are created equal. The highlights are the ones with a simple but addictive formula that will encourage you to keep trying to beat your best score knowing you can improve on that one little mistake you made. The best of the bunch in that respect are Masa’s and Chie’s, while Kirihara’s was also strangely addictive, partly due to the strangely fun nature of getting mentally tongue tied on wording like “Nechi not down. Don’t raise the Koma” and having half a second to piece it all together.

Sayaka and Akki’s games are more or less reskinned versions of the same concept, but you can complete them so quickly that you can easily burn through a couple of rounds just trying to nail the perfect run. Really the only games I was disappointed by were Miya’s and Obihiro’s. Miya’s felt a little too basic even within the minigame format and lacked a sense of replayability. Meanwhile, Obihiro’s is a similar button press timing game to Sayaka and Akki’s, but the difference in timing felt less noticeable and so good or bad runs feel less rewarding as a result.

The core gameplay loop is centred around the nine minigames available. You score Choco Coins through these games which can be cashed in to get photos of the various wrestlers. These photos come in four different rarity types: Choco Donuts (65% chance), Choco Pies (25% chance), Choco Cakes (8% chance) and Choco Bars (2%).

You can earn between 75-375 Choco Coins per minigame depending on the game and your ability, with the longest games capping out at two minutes. Pulling for a photo costs 500 coins, so you can very easily pull for a photo every time you open up the app if you want, or choose to save up and pull ten at a time (which doesn’t give you a discount, but any experienced gatcha player will tell you makes you feel luckier). The good news is if you pull a duplicate photo, you are given some coins back.

The idea of collecting the various 300 photos and hunting rare Choco Bars will be the main draw of keeping players returning, especially after the novelty of playing minigames with your favourite ChocoPro wrestlers starts to wear a little thin. Whether this type of gatcha mechanic is interesting or not is a personal thing – if you’ve ever found yourself suckered in to buying card packs you’ll know the thrill of a lucky pull or if simple collect-a-thons is worth your time.

The good thing is at this stage there’s no danger of being lured into spending real world dollars on more pulls, and to my knowledge no discussion of that feature being added in the future. All Choco Coins are earned through playing the game organically.

Whether the game is worth your money will ultimately come down to how big a fan you are of ChocoPro. The photo collection and the novelty of playing these minigames with your favorite wrestlers will likely be bring you enough joy to make it worth the price tag. Especially with some stellar art and music choices. Otherwise the games might be a bit too simplistic to keep you entertained long enough on their strength alone.

For fans though, the ChocoPro flavoring on these minigames is a lot of fun, and for a wrestling company that puts everything out for free, this is a small price to pay for something a bit different.