About Bubble Shooter
Bubble Shooter is a colour-matching puzzle. You fire coloured bubbles up into a honeycomb of bubbles at the top of the screen, popping groups of three or more of the same colour, and try to clear the board before the bubbles are pushed down to the red line.
How to play
- The board starts with 6 rows of bubbles in 5 colours, arranged in a staggered honeycomb pattern 10 bubbles wide.
- A fired bubble travels in a straight line, bounces off the side walls and sticks where it touches another bubble or the top.
- If it joins a group of 3 or more of its colour, the whole group pops for 10 points per bubble.
- Any bubbles left hanging, no longer connected to the top row, fall as well and score 20 points each.
- Every sixth shot that fails to pop anything pushes a new row of random bubbles in from the top and moves the whole board down by one row.
- If any bubble reaches the bottom row at the red line, the game is lost. Clearing every bubble wins, and adds a 500-point bonus to the score saved as your best.
- The next bubble's colour is always one that is still on the board.
Controls
- Mouse: move the pointer to aim; the dashed guide shows the direction. Click to fire.
- Touch: put your finger on the game, slide to aim, then lift your finger to fire.
- You can aim anywhere above the shooter except almost flat to the sides. There is no keyboard control.
Tips and strategy
- Go for the bubbles that hold up large hanging sections. Popping a small group near the top can drop dozens of bubbles worth 20 points each.
- Use the side walls to bank shots into gaps that are not reachable directly.
- Try to make a pop with the sixth, twelfth and so on shot, because a successful pop on those shots stops a new row from being added.
- Because the next colour always comes from what is on the board, colours disappear entirely as you clear them, and the board gets easier to finish.
- Keep the lower rows tidy. Bubbles near the red line are the real threat, so deal with low clusters before chasing big combos higher up.
Background
Bubble shooters became widely known through Taito's arcade puzzle game Puzzle Bobble, released in 1994 and also known as Bust-a-Move. Its combination of aiming, banking shots and colour matching proved easy to learn and was copied widely on computers, browsers and phones. The genre sits between action and puzzle games: precise aim matters, but planning which bubbles will fall when a group pops is what earns the big scores.
Questions
- When does a new row drop?
- Every sixth shot you take, if that shot does not pop anything, a new row is added at the top and the board shifts down one row.
- How do I lose?
- When any bubble ends up in the lowest row, marked by the red line near the shooter.
- Is there a bonus for clearing the board?
- Yes. Clearing every bubble adds 500 points to the score saved as your best in your browser's local storage. The on-screen score does not show the bonus.