Bubble shooter games

What is a bubble shooter?

A bubble shooter is a puzzle you play with a launcher. Colored bubbles hang from the top of the screen and you fire one bubble at a time from the bottom. It sticks where it lands, and if it touches two or more of its own color, the whole group pops. The bubbles keep creeping down, so the game is a race between your aim and the ceiling.

It's an old arcade idea that never really went away, because it's easy to learn in one shot and takes a long time to get good at. The good part isn't popping. It's dropping: knock out the few bubbles holding up a big clump and everything below them falls at once.

How to play

• Aim with your finger or mouse and let go (or click) to shoot.
• A bubble that touches a group of the same color, making three or more, pops the whole group.
• Any bubbles that were only hanging on through that group fall. Drops score more than pops.
• Bounce off the side walls to reach gaps you can't hit straight on.
• Swap to your next bubble when the current color has nowhere useful to go.
• If the bubbles reach the line at the bottom, the round is over.

In Bubble Bay a dotted line shows your path with a dot at each wall bounce, a ghost bubble sits exactly where yours will stick, white rings mark what will pop and gold rings mark what will fall. The preview uses the same math as the real shot, so what you see is what you get.

Bubble shooter tips

Drop, don't pop

Look for the small group holding a big clump to the top and pop that. One big drop is worth far more than a row of small pops, and in Bubble Bay a drop of 6 or more bubbles also pushes the tide back.

Never waste a shot

A shot that pops nothing usually costs you, and in our game it fills the tide twice as fast. When you can't make a match, park the bubble next to one of the same color so the next shot finishes the group.

Use the walls

Bank shots get you behind a wall of the wrong color and into high gaps. Aim at the side, watch where the ghost bubble lands, then adjust a hair at a time.

Play the goal, not the board

When a level only asks you to free the critters, it ends the moment the last one is out. Don't tidy the far corner. Spend every shot getting closer to the goal.

Our bubble shooter strategy article goes deeper on aiming, banking and planning drops.

Bubble Bay: rescue the reef

Bubble Bay hides little sea critters inside some of the bubbles, and freeing them is usually the goal. There are six reefs, from Coral Cove to Sunken Garden, with 15 levels each. Reefs start with 3 colors and work up to 8, and each color has its own mark (a heart, a star, a leaf, a drop and so on) so you never have to tell them apart by shade alone. Later reefs add stones, bombs, shifty bubbles that change color, ice and lightning.

Every freed critter swims into your Aquarium. The endless Tide Run keeps adding rows and new tricks, the Daily Reef is the same run for everyone that day, and Calm Bay has no tide and no way to lose. Boosters (rainbow, bomb and lightning) are earned by playing and never sold.

Questions