Bubble Pop tips: bank shots and falling clusters

Coloured bubbles hang from the ceiling in Bubble Pop, one of the 16-bit style games on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba. A launcher sits at the bottom, and you fire bubbles up into the cluster to match colours and burst them. The catch is the ceiling, which keeps creeping down towards you.

It's a gentler game than most of its neighbours on the shelf, but it rewards a little planning, and a good shot can clear a surprising amount of the board at once.

Aiming and firing

With the mouse, point where you want the bubble to go and click to fire. With the keyboard, Left and Right aim, and Space or Up fires. An aim guide shows where the shot will travel, including its bounce off the side walls, so you can line up bank shots rather than guessing at them.

Bounce shots are worth learning early. A straight line to the colour you need is often blocked, but bouncing off a wall can bring the bubble in from an angle and slip it into a gap you couldn't reach directly. Treat the side walls as part of the board, not just its edges.

Matching and dropping

Join three or more bubbles of the same colour and they pop. That much is simple. The bigger reward is what happens to anything left hanging: bubbles that were only held up by the ones you've just popped fall, and falling bubbles earn bonus points.

So when you look at the board, look for the bubbles that are holding a lot of others up. Popping a small group near the top of a big hanging chunk can bring the whole chunk down at once, which is far better than picking off groups one at a time from the bottom. It's the single biggest difference between a middling score and a good one.

Watching the ceiling

Every few shots, the ceiling drops a row, pushing the whole cluster closer. If the bubbles cross the line, the game is over, so the board has to be cleared before that happens. This is what keeps Bubble Pop from being a purely patient game. You can't spend forever setting up the perfect shot, and a shot that pops nothing still counts towards the next drop.

When the cluster is getting low, put shots that pop something, even small groups, ahead of clever set-ups that might pay off later. When there's room to breathe, that's the time to work towards a big drop.

Habits that help

Look at the colour loaded in the launcher before you aim, and think about where it fits best rather than firing at the nearest match. Avoid parking a stray bubble where it buries a group you'll need later, because covering a colour you can't reach again is how boards get stuck. And when you have a colour that fits nowhere useful, put it somewhere harmless, out of the way of the groups you're building.

Games by Zaweba shows your score next to your best when the game ends, and keeps your best, plays and wins on your PC, so you can see whether you're improving. Esc pauses at any time, F11 gives you the full screen, the title card has the rules and controls, and F1 explains them again if you need a reminder. As with every game in the app, the bubbles and the pops are drawn and made in code, so there's nothing to download and no adverts between boards.

Take your time over each shot while the ceiling is high, aim for the bubbles that hold others up, and save the quick, safe pops for when it isn't.