Bubble Witch 2 (iOS)

ADVENTURE!!! No, it's bubbles.

There's something about King that means their games are the equivalent of gaming cocaine. Whatever it is that there company agenda is, I hope it's not sinister as their approach to integrate themselves into items and devices has gotten themselves a potential method of taking over the planet. Not through violence but by distracting everyone with brightly coloured games that are a piece of piss of to start playing but quickly becomes a nightmare in trying to master and progress beyond a certain point. Bubble Witch 2 is no different.

What type of tree was that?

Bubble Witch 2 is a bubble popper game which was made popular by the game series Bust A Move, where you have a selection of brightly coloured balls in an arena and get to fire upwards into that arena, more balls to try and pop the balls that are there, by colliding balls of the same colour together in sets of 3 or higher. That's basically it. You can bank shots off the sides, slip them between other bubbles and use special bubbles if you need which can count as blank bubbles that connect and cause an instant correct colour to align. Failure to hit the right bubble will cause that bubble to be "stuck" and the game carries on until you run out of bubbles or achieve the objective.

You WON! Everything falls and gains points.

Thankfully in Bubble Witch 2, there's multiple objectives to be met from "Free the Ghost" Where there's a single ghost block in the middle surrounded by bubbles, all you've got to do is break the 6 bubbles surrounding it to free the ghost, within a very tight limit of bubbles. Other modes include "Get to the top" where you just get 6 bubbles removed from the uppermost line of the field, and "Free the Animals" where you've got to release multiple bubbles that have animals trapped in them. At the time of playing, I've yet to encounter more modes but there could be future levels and updates.

...So here's a witch in a fashion crisis

The first levels ease you in gradually, showing you the ropes and making it almost impossible to lose unless you're going WAY out of your way to deliberately scupper yourself, though if you've got yourself linked into Face book you can also compete with other like-minded 'socialites' for the best score though most will just be glad to have gotten through the level by that point. You can also donate gifts of lives and such for the other players or if they ask for it, tickets to get through to the next set of levels. Thankfully even nobby-no-mates can progress as once you hit the end of a level and win, you automatically go through after a day of waiting. Or pay...

Lesson 2: Grandma and sucking eggs.

Yes it's a freemium game. You can pay for bonus time, bonus balls, extra moves and special and almost anything else you can think of save from actually BEATING the level itself. With enough cash you can pass most things but the challenge is to get through the game without paying a penny. Which makes the harder levels even harder. It becomes a point that you're going to NEED to be lucky to make much progress in the harder levels as you'll be stripped down to the bare minimum of balls needed to beat a level and THEN you better hope it's the right sequence of ball colours. Thankfully, removal of ALL of a colour negates any more from turning up, even if they're already in the "Next to play" position.

Lots of levels, you likely won't see them all.

The game is banking of frustration to make money. "I just nearly beat this level and need one more bubble that's red to beat this, I'll pay for the 5 more bubbles" no reds show up. Or it will after 15 bubbles, you've no real control on that front. It makes a nice change though to see that there's no block on people progressing and nor is there a compulsory purchase, but the structure and difficulty means that you will feel very pressured by the game to buy things you don't really want to. Be careful as well when playing as the game gives you a small amount of in-game cash and there's no "Are you sure?" if you go to spend it, it will just take it on the first button press.

Multiple ball types keep the variation going

The game looks lovely, but then it should do given the simplicity of the underlying engine, the company has made a living out of looking nice and accessible and once again, they've done it here too. Bright, colourful and pleasantly appealing to the eye for almost all ages. A solid core of a puzzle game with just enough unique things to separate it from the others but having said that, I'd personally prefer to see Bub and Bob on either side of the bubble cannon and fight it out with Baron Von Blubba once again.

...someone kill the writer.

It's nice and it'll make them a fortune, but it's the same structure used once again. I suppose if it works, there's no need to fix it.

Bubble Bobble

It's cute, it's bouncy, and it’s bubble-y and a little bobble-y too. It's Rainbow Islands. No, no it's not. You'd have to be absolutely shit-brained to think that after such a lead-in. It's the arcade classic that is Bubble Bobble (and ported to NES, Megadrive, Gameboy and a whole plethora of other machines and systems), what we have here is a game that took the standard idea back in 1986 of having platform games that usually focused on just one room/screen at a time, and then turned it into the semi-puzzler, semi-action fest that is now known as Bubble Bobble.

The recipe, take two dragons and colour-code Green and Blue as necessary. Conjure up 100+ levels each of almost a full screen in size and drop the two (maximum 2, minimum 1) dragons into the levels. Ensure they can move freely, descend at a steady rate when falling and can jump up through platforms but not downwards through them. Provide bubbles as a means of attack for the dragons.

Once ready, carefully sprinkle enemies on the upper layers of the levels and in the lower layers of the levels include much more liberally with a smattering of spread here and there through the middle layers of this bake-off. Next, add water, heat and electricity as bonus power bubbles, include catching jingle and play until puking rainbows out of your eyeballs.

Allow room for bonus levels, power ups and warps, toss in some bones as a compulsory measure to devour the meal and ensure that the meal cannot be devoured in solo. Also hide some extra levels of the mixture, somewhere else that's difficult to get to, just for the added fuck-you required in older arcade games. Cook steadily until top layer is nicely browned, middle layers are a little tricky and the base layers are rock hard.

Murder self for over torturing metaphor of making a cake in comparison to creating Bubble Bobble.

The above is a basic rundown for the uninitiated, as to what happens in Bubble Bobble. You control your happily big-mouthed dragon as he jumps about the levels, picking up power ups and bonuses, blowing bubbles at the opponents and trapping them, before popping the bubbles to kill the enemies. Hopefully, before they break out and (usually just as you get to them) don't kill you by running into you, or the rare ones, firing some projectile at you.

Your power ups run the gamut of speed increase, rapid fire bubbles, long bubbles, fire balls instead of bubbles (can't bounce on these though), firing lightning bubbles (which launch a lightning bolt across the screen when popped). Popping multiple enemies at once gives you added bonuses and releases bonus bubbles that when popped, provide a letter of the word "EXTEND" which when completed, finishes that level and gives you a bonus life for your adorably cute and certainly marketable, dragon.

Enemies look as cute and friendly as the dragons do and you'd be forgiven for thinking that his whole setup might have been lifted from some kiddies’ daytime TV show between blowing bubbles at people and singing crappy songs to each other. Thankfully this isn't Barney (get the shotgun...) and we're instead treated to a wholesome, responsive and enjoyable game. For the most part.

The first 30-40 levels are fine. Gradually easing you into the idea of the game and then challenging you with the warp holes that drop you out of the bottom, ease you back in at the top of the screen so you can quickly escape or follow after various enemies. It's around level 40 onwards that you'll come a real cropper if you haven't mastered the timing of the bubbles, bouncing on bubbles to elevate higher, knowing where you can blow through a wall when jumping and not get hit and be able to race around the levels quickly to get to the items you need.

Level 99 earns the title of pigfucker of the year (1986, and runner up in 1932... or not) where you've a very short amount of time to navigate the level to a point where an item will appear that will permit you to the secret bonus levels and the TRUE final boss monster... only boss monster... There's just one big boss monster and depending how you get there (and how many players there are) will determine if you get the true ending. Most won't get past level 20 unless focused on the goals and familiar with the power ups, how they work and of course, their optimal use and deployment within the game itself.

Sometimes you'll get other items like the umbrella which lets you skip 3-5 levels, crosses that wipe out multiple enemies, bottles that give you bonuses and lets you end that level at that point. Candies to modify your bubbles, shoes to run faster and so on and so forth. The game feels huge and it pads the game play rather well but the fact the music goes on for SO long is irritating to say the least. There are some changes such as when you're running short of the hidden time limit in a level, where the music speeds up. Or when the skull whale, Baron Von Blubba, turns up to hunt you down for taking too long and finally, the boss room which sounds very different. Oh and certain bonuses.

Controls however are very responsive and the simplicity of the game is kept that way with just Jump and Shoot. Thankfully it didn't go for Up as jump and use one button, but I think that would have killed the playability and drowned the series at the first block into a big soapy bath of bubble liquid. This would have been very ironic but thankfully not.

It's a good fun game, more fun at the time it was released when things like variation and the internet, weren't around to give us a larger knowledge of what is and was available at the time. But it's bright, it's colourful and loud enough for us all to enjoy the fun mechanics of the game and have a few hours of enjoyment from the system rather than many other games that I could think of that were a pure waste of circuits. You could do better, but you'd be hard pressed to find it, even these days.