Crystal Crisis

The gameplay in Crystal Crisis is heavily inspired by Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. Like Puzzle Fighter, players control sets of two blocks ("crystals" in game parlance) that fall into a pit-like field (fifteen crystals tall by six crystals wide). Touching a crystal with a Spark Crystal of the same color will cause all adjacent crystals of that color to break and be removed from the field. The more crystals the player is able to break at once or in sequence, the greater number of Countdown Crystals that will appear on an opponent's field, which can only be turned to normal crystals and broken after a certain number of crystals have been dropped.

A Poly-Crystal will also appear occasionally, which will instantly break all crystals of whatever color it is dropped on. If the fourth column of a player's field is completely filled, the game ends and that player loses the battle. Unlike Puzzle Fighter, Crystal Crisis features "edge-wrapping", allowing crystals to press past the sides of the play field and instantly move from the rightmost column to the leftmost column or vice versa. This can also be used to bisect a pair of falling crystals, allowing one crystal to fall on each side of the field.

The idea for Crystal Crisis originated from Nicalis president Tyrone Rodriguez, who sought to create a new competitive puzzle game. During development, the initial roster of the game featured eight playable characters from various Nicalis titles, which expanded to twelve as the team added characters from other games the company was developing simultaneously. Nicalis also reached out to Studio Saizensen, whom the company had worked with on previous titles, and Tezuka Productions for use of their characters, along with the creators of other independent Japanese games, bringing the total roster to nineteen.

Crystal Crisis was first announced in May 2018 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive planned for release later that same year. In December 2018, a PlayStation 4 version of the game was announced alongside a delay of the game, now planned for release on April 23, 2019. During this time, professional fighting game player Justin Wong was brought on to the team as a consultant to help playtest the game and balance the characters. In January 2019, it was announced that the game would be delayed a second time until May 28, 2019 in order to add additional features, including new playable character Kawase Umihara and in-game narration by Peter Cullen.

Crystal Crisis received an average score of 79/100 from the review aggregation website Metacritic, indicating generally favorable reception. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received strong approval, being recommended by 58% of critics.