Bubble shooter strategy: aim, bank and drop

How bubble shooters work

You fire one bubble at a time from the bottom of the screen. It flies in a straight line, bounces off the side walls, and sticks to the first bubble it touches. If it joins a group of three or more of the same color, the whole group pops. Then comes the important part: any bubbles that were only hanging on through that group lose their link to the top and fall. Those are drops.

Most bubble shooters push the whole cluster down a row every so often, and if it reaches the bottom you lose. So every shot either makes things better or brings the end a little closer.

Drop, don't pop

This is the idea that separates good players from busy ones. A pop clears three or four bubbles. A drop can clear twenty in one shot, because everything hanging below the group comes down with it.

Before you shoot, look for the thin place: a small group that's holding a big clump to the top or to the rest of the board. Pop that one and the clump falls. In Bubble Bay dropped bubbles score at least double what a pop does, and bigger drops pay more per bubble, so one good drop beats a dozen tidy pops.

Work from the top down where you can. Bubbles near the ceiling hold everything else up, and clearing a path to them is how the big drops happen.

Bank shots

The side walls are your friends. A bubble that hits a wall bounces off at the same angle it came in, so you can reach gaps that are hidden behind a wall of the wrong color, or slide a bubble into a slot high on the board.

• Aim for the gap, not the bubble. You want your bubble to stop in a particular empty spot. Think about where it will stick, then work out the line.
• One bounce is plenty. Two bounce shots are possible, but small aiming errors grow with every bounce.
• Use the aim guide. Bubble Bay draws a dotted path with a dot at every wall bounce, puts a ghost bubble in the exact spot yours will stick, and rings the bubbles that will pop and the ones that will fall. The preview uses the same math as the real shot, so if the ghost is in the right place, the shot is good.

Plan with the next bubble

You can always see the bubble after the one you're holding, and you can swap them. Use that. Before you shoot, ask where both bubbles are going. Often the best play is to swap, take the easy match with the second color, and save the first for a spot that's about to open.

When neither bubble fits anywhere useful, don't fire it into the middle of a good color. Park it on the edge, next to a single bubble of its own color, where it sets up the next match instead of blocking one.

Don't waste shots

Every shot that pops nothing brings the bottom closer. In Bubble Bay the tide bar fills one pip for a shot that pops something and two for a shot that pops nothing, and a drop of six or more bubbles takes a pip back off. When all the pips are full, the reef moves down a row.

So a missed shot costs twice as much as a small pop, and a big drop actually buys you time. When the board is getting close to the line, switch to safe shots that clear low bubbles, even small groups, until you've got room again. The bubbles in Bubble Bay help you here: their faces turn worried and then scared as the reef gets near the line.

Colors and special bubbles

• Watch the color count. When a color is gone from the board, you'll stop getting it. Clearing the last few of a color makes every following shot more useful.
• Rocks fall, they don't pop. A stone bubble never matches. Pop whatever it hangs from and it drops.
• Bombs chain. Pop a group touching a bomb and it blasts everything nearby, and bombs set each other off.
• Ice thaws. A frozen bubble can't join a group until you pop something next to it.

Each bubble color in Bubble Bay also wears its own mark (a heart, a star, a leaf and so on), so you never need to tell colors apart by shade. Turn on Bold shapes in Settings if colors look alike to you.

Play for the goal

Many levels don't ask you to clear the board. In Bubble Bay most levels ask you to free the sea critters hidden in certain bubbles, and the level ends the moment the last one is free. Spend every shot getting closer to the critters, not tidying the far corner. That's also how you finish under par, and finishing in par shots or fewer earns the third star.

For every rule, booster and mode, see our Bubble Bay guide. If you want bubbles without any pressure, try Calm Bay inside the game, where nothing can go wrong. And if you like aiming puzzles, Brick Bloom is all about angles too.

Questions