Pufferio player guide
Every puffy plays the same one-button game: hold, release, survive. Each of the four bends exactly one rule. None is strictly better: each ability answers a different question, and each has a counter.
The rule: at maximum inflation the pufferfish extends spikes. Any puffy that touches him while they are out loses all of its air on the spot.
Pick it if you like holding the center and daring people to come. A full-puff pufferfish parked in the middle of a shrinking ring is a problem everyone else has to solve, because bumping him is how you become small, slow to launch, and next to a spiky wall.
Against it: never touch a full pufferfish, wait. Spikes only exist at maximum puff, and nobody holds maximum forever. The moment he launches or vents, he is an ordinary small puffy with no air. That is your window.
The rule: the hamster keeps a reserve in his cheeks, so he can launch twice in a row where everyone else gets one.
Pick it for mobility. The second launch turns fatal positions into escapes: knocked toward the edge, a hamster can fire once to kill his momentum and again to come back. It is also the best knockout tool in the game: the first launch closes distance, the second delivers the hit.
Against it: count. A hamster who has spent both launches is the slowest thing in the arena until he refills. Pressure him right after the second burst, and do not chase him right after the first, that is exactly what the reserve is for.
The rule: when the frog launches, she jumps: an arc that travels over other puffies instead of through them.
Pick it to be uncatchable. Surrounded? Leap out over the crowd. Cornered at the rim? Leap back through the middle. The frog ignores the geometry that kills everyone else, and in crowded twenty-player rounds that is worth a lot.
Against it: a frog in the air chose her landing spot the moment she jumped; she cannot steer mid-leap. Read the arc and be waiting there, inflated. And a frog with no air is a frog with no jump.
The rule: once per round, instead of falling out, the balloon cat hovers at the edge for a moment, long enough to launch back in.
Pick it as insurance. The cat converts one certain death per round into a comeback, which changes how bravely you can play the other ninety percent of it. Fight at the rim; you are the only puffy with a second opinion about falling.
Against it: a knocked-out cat is not out until the hover ends. Watch the edge and meet the return launch with a full puff. And remember it is once per round: a cat that already floated is just a cat.