We previously wrote about Japanese startup Quan Inc., which in addition to producing its own Lounge chat app, has produced a cute sticker app for a major Thai telco.

But yesterday the company kicked its ‘repertoire of cute’ up a notch by release a new mobile game called Emotipon. In short, the title is sort of like GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, only it’s far simpler, and far more cute.

Like P&D this is an orb-matching game, but here you just need to trace out lines of matching orbs with your finger. It’s almost painfully easy. And by matching more orbs, you can launch a more powerful attack against your enemy. As you progress, you collect ‘helper’ characters that you can take into battle with you, each with special abilities that you can use (just like P&D).

I expect Quan must be targeting younger kids with Emotipon, because I think few adults would choose something like this over P&D. But surprisingly it’s launching in English as well as Japanese, so there may be opportunity for it to pick up fans outside Japan, especially in markets around Asia where cute Japanese apps do best.

If you’d like to check out Emotipon, you can get it for free over on the App Store (via Gamebiz)

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.