Interesting to think about how StarSweep and Meteos are both Panel De Pon inspired games that each take completely non-overlapping ideas and idioms from it, to the point that neither resembles the other in the slightest.
Masahiro Sakurai had the right idea for versus puzzle asymmetric multiplayer when designing Meteos. Forget garbage patterns, just make the block physics and board dimensions all different. I'm sure it's a mess for competitive, but character differences at least feel meaningful.
I will say that the game's true draw – the dozens of "characters" with different physics and art styles – remains solid. In that respect Meteos is kind of the Dicey Dungeons of versus puzzlers (lots of "levels" with low individual replay value).
The central mechanic that lets you keep matching during "chains" to extend them gives this a rather, shall we say, "button-mashy" feel, where your route to victory is just maximising APM instead of trying to form chain-friendly macro-structures or patterns.
Decided to play a few rounds of Meteos, off of my recent Petal Crash exploits, and like… I hadn't internalised how much this is just Panel De Pon again, complete with the delayed top-out mechanics and garbage blocks that give you matches for free.