Bubble Shooter - Pop Bubbles

I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence but it seems the game has gotten much harder after the latest couple of updates. I’m stuck on level 1582, so I decided to update the app to see if it was a bug. No luck with 1582 after the update so I tried dozens of older levels and they’re also much more difficult than they used to be. Many of the levels leading up to 1582 (like in the 1570s) were also extremely hard and not very fun. I had to buy several power-ups/extra moves to get through the last 10 or so levels, when normally I could get through the levels in a few tries without much need for power-ups (unless I really wanted to get a level over with). Also this is a bit nitpicky but it’s annoying that the game asks if you’re sure you want to restart a level because you’ll lose progress. The game used to seem like it ran smoother before it asked that every time. Also almost every time I enter a level, even if it’s one I’ve completed before, the game tells me about the special kinds of bubbles in the level (like ice bubbles or the bubbles that turn to stone). It’s a bit annoying that this info pops up almost every time I play a level. But mostly it’s a shame that I can’t move forward in the game anymore. This is my favorite Bubble Shooter app and I’ve been looking at other ones since this one has become too difficult to be fun (1582, for example, is so full of stone bubbles that fireballs and bombs aren’t even really effective).

With the recent update, the design of the bubbles is a lot “smoother”, which is cool. But, the new update rarely allows the “watch an ad for 3 more moves”. It only seems to offer it when you have like 20+ bubbles left. The game seems to want you to play each level a certain amount of times before you can even get close to beating it, especially the super difficult ones, and does everything in its power to make you either lose, or pay money to beat it. I have to play the super difficult levels like 15-20 times before it finally offers the “watch ad for three more moves” when I have less than like ten bubbles to pop. It definitely seems to run on some sort of algorithm of how many times you play a level before it’s possible to beat it. Every single time I have less than 5 bubbles left to pop, the game only offers you to buy more moves, and does not offer the “watch an ad for 3 more moves” option. This is really frustrating, and obviously a way for the game to make more money because it’s easier to just spend $1.99 when you’re SO close to beating the level, rather than start all over again. Super, super frustrating.

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This game works, and does exactly what I wanted it to do; pop bubbles. However, this game is designed to get you to either spend money or try over and over and over again to get to the next level while it throws endless “challenges” at you that are designed to be gateways to prevent progression. For example, at a certain level they introduce soap bubbles. The soap bubbles spread quickly and prevent combos. So if there’s a soap bubble and you don’t pop it right away (by hitting it with the same color twice), it spreads and covers everything around it. The game also seems to never give you the color ball you need to make that crucial play. If there’s 20 blues and only one red left, and that red is buried under layers of blues, the game will give you a near endless supply of red to fire knowing you cant even get to the one red on the board and when a single blue was all you needed to clear the level. It’s purposely cheaty to get you to buy those coins so you can afford the few power ups available to essentially cheese the level to get past it. And it limits the number of balls you get per level, so if it decides to screw you with colors you can’t use, to bad, better spend some money. Frustrating. It also drains your battery life like no ones business. Play for an hour and your battery is down to 20% from a full charge.

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I have been playing this game for about a year now. It started out as a time waster for travel, but has become far more frustrating than it is worth to attempt that challenge. Not to mention it’s worth literally nothing to get 3/3 stars on a level. I don’t know if the ball bouncing off the grey line at the top was always around but it make the game much harder. I also feel like some levels it’s near impossible to get three stars even if you max out your power ups. Unless you want to put down some mad cash. I also feel that the game plots against you. I will be around 100 points from 3 stars with 10 bubbles left and a simple red will give me the win but instead it gives you every single color but the one I need. It’s even drawn 5 of the same color in a row which is BS. Also, the levels change each time you reset the level! What is the point of being a level if it changes every time you load it. This game is definitely fun and overly challenging at times. Do yourself a favor and avoid the challenge of getting three stars.

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All of the innovations added to this classic game are unnecessary, but a couple of them are kind of neat (bi-colored bubbles, black holes, reflective top surface). A few are dumb (chains, locks, slime, the mouth ones, etc). Others, like the "soap" are just awful. It requires you to get two bubbles in a row of the same color in order to remove anything, and levels with this stuff devolve into a pure game of chance. I have now reached a level where it genuinely seems impossible to progress without micropurchasing powerups. In bubble-shooter. I feel the concept of spending actual real-world money to beat a level of friggin bubble-shooter is just mind-bogglingly absurd, so this is the end of the line for me. In addition, for how simple and mindless the game is (and should be) there is WAY too much meta-gameplay. Constant pop-ups about "quests" and "playing cards" and "leagues" and other bs, and like eight different types of currency ch-chinging (you can't use it in-game unless you pay real money though). The net result is just that you have to click through twenty screens in order to begin each level. To add insult to injury, this extra-curricular nonsense is very buggy and the app often hangs between levels requiring me to force-close it.