Bubble Town

Written by Matt Swider  on March 02, 2009

Review: A town in which Bust-A-Move must be a neighbor.

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Bubble Town puts a Bust-A-Move clone in the palm of your hands at all times, which means if you've been addicted to Taito's classic puzzle game in the past, you're going to have to enter rehab one day due to your addiction to this iPhone takeoff. Matching colored bubbles may not be everyone's ideal source of fun, but it can be the ultimate time waster for fans of the puzzle genre. And, since there's no Bust-A-Move presently available on the App Store, Oberon Media is stealing all of the bubble-popping market share.

The gameplay of Bubble Town consists of firing randomly colored bubbles into the air with a cannon at the bottom of the screen and attempting to match them with similarly colored bubbles hovering above. Linking three of a kind (or more if you fill a nice gap) makes them vanish and is one step closer to your ultimate goal of eliminating all of the bubbles. As you progress through the game's worlds, bosses come into play, power-ups can be attained and new bubble types are added.

In addition to being different colors, the bubble designs vary with unique face designs that stare at you while you line up your shot. And, it's always interesting to see the designs of the new bubble types and how they transform the gameplay and your strategy. For example, sleeping bubbles require you to wake them up with an initial bubble blast before they can be matched and eliminated. All of the colorful bubble types and backgrounds make this game's graphics as special as a puzzle game can look. To go along with the bright graphics, some high-energy rock music plays in the background with a heavy beat. It's not the sort of cheesy music you'd expect from a puzzle game.

Unlike the Bust-A-Move series, which depended on a time limit, Bubble Town makes each shot count. If the game gives you twelve bubbles to shoot and you don't eliminate all of the hovering bubbles with that allotted amount, the playing area shrinks and you're lent some more bubbles. While not ground-breaking or genre-defying, this gameplay twist does add more strategy to the normal bubble-popping phenomenon.

While the tilt functions of the iPhone have been a ground-breaking function, they're not too useful in this game's case. Lining up shots by using the accelerometer isn't as precise as using your fingers to slide a little bar below the cannon. Also, the map and menu buttons aren't very responsive to the touch of your finger. Thankfully, this abnormality doesn't carry over to the critical gameplay.