Bubble Shooter Challenge review

What it is

The bubble shooter is one of the oldest browser-game templates there is. A launcher sits at the bottom of the screen, a wall of coloured bubbles hangs from the top, and you fire one bubble at a time into that wall. Land it against two or more of the same colour and the group pops. Anything that was hanging only from the popped group loses its anchor and drops as well, and those drops are where the big scores come from.

Bubble Shooter Challenge is a level-based version of that formula. Each level gives you an arrangement to clear, and the developer's pitch leans heavily on boosters: bomb bubbles, rainbow bubbles and fire shots, all described as ways to clear large sections at once. The boosters are what the game wants you to notice; the shooter underneath is the one you have played before.

How it plays

Input is a single click or tap. Move the pointer to set the angle and click to fire; on a phone, tapping a spot on the wall sends the bubble towards it. There is no keyboard involvement, so this is one of the few games on the site where a phone is not at a disadvantage. The one thing to watch on a small screen is your own thumb, which sits over the launcher and makes low taps easy to misjudge.

The skill is almost entirely aiming, and the interesting aim is the bank shot. Bubbles bounce off the side walls at the angle they arrive, so a shot that looks impossible straight on is often a simple ricochet. Whether the game draws an aiming guide, and how far it extends before the first bounce, matters a great deal to the feel.

Tips that actually help

Bubble shooters look like luck and mostly are not. Nearly every version shows you the colour of your next bubble in advance, and reading it is most of the strategy.

• Pop from the top down where you can. Clearing a group that other bubbles hang from drops everything beneath it, and dropped bubbles are worth more than popped ones.
• Learn the bank shot early. Aim at the side wall about halfway to your target and the bubble arrives from an angle a straight shot cannot reach.
• Do not waste a shot getting rid of an awkward colour. Park it high on the wall, tucked under a group you are about to drop, and it will fall with the rest.
• Save the boosters for the last third of a level, when the remaining bubbles are scattered and single shots stop being efficient.
• Fire a rainbow bubble into a pair, not a big group; it creates a pop where you had none rather than adding one bubble to a pop you already had.
• If a level has a shot limit or a descending ceiling, count remaining shots against the colours left before you start clearing edges.

The boosters

Bombs, rainbows and fire shots are the headline, and they bend the difficulty curve in a particular way. A plain bubble shooter gets hard when the colours are mixed finely enough that no single shot pops more than three. A bomb erases that problem wherever it lands, and a rainbow bubble removes the one constraint you had to plan around. Hard levels feel generous as a result, but the game never really asks you to aim better. If you like bubble shooters for the geometry, you will end up ignoring the boosters on purpose.

Where it falls short

The genre is crowded and this entry does little to stand out beyond the boosters. The developer's description is written for a search engine rather than a player, so I cannot tell you how many levels there are, whether there is a timer, or how progress is stored; none of it is stated. On a laptop trackpad the aim feels coarse compared with a mouse, as in every bubble shooter, but it is worth knowing before a long level.

Questions people ask

How do I pop bubbles?

Fire a bubble so it lands touching at least two others of the same colour. The connected group pops, and any bubbles that were hanging only from that group fall away too.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The whole game is click or tap, so touch is a natural fit: tap where you want the bubble to land, or at a side wall to bounce it round an obstacle.

Does it save my progress between visits?

The developer does not say. Level-based browser games like this normally keep your furthest level in the browser's own storage, so it stays on this device and will not follow you elsewhere.

What do the bomb, rainbow and fire bubbles do?

Boosters for clearing more than one shot normally would. In this genre a bomb clears the bubbles around where it lands and a rainbow matches whichever colour it touches; the developer describes all three as clearing large sections.