Bubble Island
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| Bubble Island

Innovation doesn't have to come in huge steps. Little iterations added up can be as groundbreaking as sudden paradigm shifts in the video game world.

Bubble Island is a game of tiny changes - additions to the Snake template that so many of us are familiar with. It's not revolutionary, but the little tweaks to the gameplay and the smattering of original ideas make for an entertaining experience nonetheless.

Toil and trouble

The game casts you as a weasel-like creature and gives you a number of increasingly difficult challenges, all set on a series of islands filled with bubbles, difficult terrain, and various creatures and collectibles.

You control the weasel with the '2', '4', '6', and '8' keys, while '5' controls your cannon, which you'll need to use against the spiders that scuttle down the screen and try to devour you.

An energy bar at the top of the screen shows you how many more hits you can take before it's Game Over.

The bubbles you pick up act as the tail of your weasel-fronted snake monstrosity, and you'll need to dodge them once they've formed part of your conga line. There are no borders in the screen, so passing out of the right side will bring you back on the left.

Weasel snake

Different levels have different goals, some requiring you to pick up all the bubbles and others requiring you to kill all the creatures. Others still require you to collect the masks that bob around the scenery. The variety keeps things fresh, but you're not always sure what it is you're supposed to be doing.

The cartoon graphics are nothing to write home about, but they keep things reasonably clear. With the cannon and the changes between different levels, there's enough content that you won't be getting too bored soon.

Bubble Island is a smooth and entertaining update of a classic. It loses a little of Snake's immediacy with the addition of extra things to pay attention to, but it's still enough fun that you'll keep coming back to it time and time again.

Bubble Island

With more good ideas than bad, Bubble Island is an entertaining take on the Snake games we all know and love
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.