Game Reviews

Tiny Bubbles review - A puzzler which offers up more than you'd expect

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| Tiny Bubbles
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Tiny Bubbles review - A puzzler which offers up more than you'd expect
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| Tiny Bubbles

Match-something, ambient, and colourful puzzlers aren't hard to find on iOS or Android and they're not the most original of things. It's likely if you close your eyes and point on the App Store, you'll stumble across one of the thousands of titles.

Tiny Bubbles, however, takes the most familiar of genres and puts its own charming spin on it in a way that's hard not to love.

Popping things

Tiny Bubbles is a colour-based puzzler where you've got to match four or more colours to pop the bubbles and ultimately complete each level.

You do this by injecting colour into each blank space or by popping bubbles to manipulate the overall shape. You can blow sections up until they engorge and push their way towards others of its colour and, cooler still, you can mix up different colours for a bigger challenge.

One of the best things about it is watching the bubbles shrink and pop in a scarily real-life way. The physics of the game is brilliant, adding another level of satisfaction to your experience.

The delightful audio adds to the mellow and laid-back feel, complementing its simple graphics nicely. It's a treat for the eyes, ears, and brain as you're faced with a real challenge at times, especially when Bloop the fish interferes with his new bubbles.

What makes it truly enjoyable is its continuous introduction of game mechanics through each of the seven sections. As well as working around your basic tasks, you have to deal with shadow bubbles, mix colours together to make brown, help reunite starfish, get your bubble down to a certain size, or just pop all the bubbles altogether.

So chill

The only gripe I have with the game is that it may get a little repetitive after a while, but only if you've played it non-stop. Perhaps it might also benefit from some more competitive elements, like time trials or high score-chasers, for those more eager players.

It's not a huge game, so you should be able to complete its puzzles in a few hours depending how keen you are. Though, once you're done with the marked levels, you can enter its infinity mode and play on forever if you want to, which makes its asking price well worth paying.

I'm trying to think of other things to say about it, but all I can think about it how badly I want to get back to popping those darn bubbles.

It's fun, relaxing, challenging, pretty, clever, and, best of all, accessible. It doesn't matter what your skill is, what device you're using, or how much time you have to put into it, you'll be able to play it with ease.

If you're a puzzle-head you need to get it, like, now.

Tiny Bubbles review - A puzzler which offers up more than you'd expect

Tiny Bubbles is a clever and addictive experience that keeps things simple in the best way
Score
Emily Sowden
Emily Sowden
Emily is Pocket Gamer's News Editor and writes about all kinds of game-related things. She needs coffee to function and begrudgingly loves her Switch more than she lets on.