Bubble Shooter
A free bubble shooter that runs in your browser. Aim the launcher, fire, and three bubbles of one colour burst. Whatever was hanging from them falls, and a bubble that falls is worth double one that pops.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Aim - Touch the board and hold, or move the mouse. A dashed line shows the flight, walls included, and a ring shows the exact cell the bubble will end in.
- Shoot - Lift your finger. On a keyboard the arrow keys sweep the aim and the space bar fires; the two buttons under the board do the same thing.
- Make three - Three touching bubbles of one colour burst. Two do not, so the second one you park is an investment.
- Cut the supports - Every bubble hangs from the ceiling through its neighbours. Break the chain and everything under it drops, at 20 points a bubble against 10 for a pop.
- Watch the line - The dashed red line near the bottom is the end of the run. A bubble that settles on it or past it finishes the game.
About this game
Point at a gap, shoot, and three of a colour go. You already know this game. What you probably do not know is how much of the board is behind a wall.
An easy board opens with 38 bubbles: 4 rows, 4 colours. Medium is 48 bubbles over 5 rows and 5 colours, hard is 57 over 6 rows and 6 colours, and every colour added makes a group of three that much rarer. The ceiling is the clock. It pushes a new row down every 12 shots on easy, every 9 on medium and every 6 on hard, so if you popped nothing whatsoever you would get 96 shots on easy and 36 on hard before the bubbles arrive at the line across the bottom. Popping is the only thing that buys that room back.
We measured the walls, and the first answer was zero. Firing 121 angles at 40 opening boards per level, every resting place a bounced shot could reach was reachable by a straight shot as well, on every board, at every level. A full board has no shadows in it. Forty shots later that changes: on a played board, between one and four of the roughly fifteen places you can still reach are behind a wall and nowhere else.
Then we built a bot to find out how long a run lasts. It pops when anything pops and otherwise parks the bubble against one of its own colour, which is roughly what a person does after ten minutes. On easy and medium it never lost a run: 300 shots, twenty runs each, still going at the cut-off, clearing board after board. Hard is a different game. There the median run died after 58 shots, and only 5 runs in 20 ever cleared a board at all. If hard feels unreasonable, that is the level and not you.
Clear every bubble and you get a fresh board with your score intact. That is the only happy ending here.
What does it teach?
Angles
The bounce is a reflection, and a few hundred shots teach it better than a diagram does. Aim high on the wall and the shot lands short.
Consequences
A bubble placed now decides what is possible three shots later. This is the game's real subject and children pick it up without being told.
Counting to three
The threshold is three, always, at every level. A four-year-old can hold that rule in their head while doing something else.
Patience under a clock
The ceiling advances whatever you do, so a rushed shot and a considered one cost exactly the same. That is a useful thing to find out.
Tips
Shoot at the wall on purpose
The gap tucked under an overhang has no straight line to it, and a shot that grazes the wall arrives at an angle no direct shot can. This is the one skill this game has that a grid puzzle does not.
Take the ceiling row seriously
Bubbles hanging off the top row are the supports for everything below. One well-placed pop up there can drop a dozen bubbles that you never touched.
Park, then pop
With nothing to pop, do not dump the bubble in the nearest hole. Put it beside its own colour. The bot that started doing exactly that went from dying in 17 shots on hard to surviving 58.
Keep the sides short
The board reaches the line at its lowest point, and that is usually a column at the edge. Clearing the edges buys more time than clearing the middle.
The launcher is fair
It only ever hands you a colour still on the board, so there is no shot that could not have been useful. Being handed a colour you cannot use is not a thing that happens here.
What age is it for?
4 to 5
Easy, and no talk of scores. Four colours and a new row only every 12 shots gives a small child room to miss a lot and still see bubbles burst.
6 to 8
Easy to medium. This is where the wall bounce clicks, usually by accident first.
9 and up
Medium, then hard when medium stops ending. Our bot cleared 79 boards across 20 medium runs and only 5 across 20 hard ones.
Grown-ups
Hard. Six colours over 57 bubbles with a row arriving every 6 shots is a genuine fight, and the score is the point rather than survival.
Accessibility
Every bubble carries a shape as well as a colour: a dot, a ring, a triangle, a star, a diamond or a cross. That is deliberate, because roughly one boy in twelve cannot separate the red from the green here, and a matching game played on hue alone would not be difficult for them, it would be impossible. The whole game can be played from a keyboard, with the arrow keys sweeping the aim and the space bar firing, and the two buttons under the board do the same job for anyone who cannot hold a steady finger on a moving target. Nothing is timed against a stopwatch, and the aiming line shows exactly where a shot will land before it costs anything.
Playing together
Call the shot
One person names the gap, the other aims for it. Missing is funnier when somebody else picked the target.
One shot each
Alternate. It turns a quiet game into an argument about which support to cut, which is the good kind of argument.
Bank shots only
Agree that every shot has to touch a wall first. Scores collapse, and the geometry gets learned properly.
Guess the drop
Before a shot that cuts a support, both of you guess how many bubbles fall. The score tells you who was right.
Common questions
Is this bubble shooter free?
Yes, and there is nothing to buy inside it. No account, no download, and no advertising.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in the browser on a phone, a tablet or a computer. Adding the site to your home screen also makes it work with no connection.
How do you win?
By clearing every bubble off the board. You then get a fresh board and keep your score, so a long run is a stack of cleared boards rather than one ending.
How many colours are there?
Four on easy, five on medium and six on hard. The launcher only ever gives you a colour that is still on the board.
Why did those bubbles fall without popping?
They were hanging from the ones you popped. Anything no longer connected to the ceiling drops, and each of those is worth 20 points against 10 for a popped one.
Can I bounce a shot off the wall?
Yes, and on a board with holes in it some places can be reached no other way. The aiming line draws the bounce for you.
Does it save my game?
Yes. Leave in the middle of a board and it is waiting where you left it, on that device, with the score and the shot count intact.
Is it suitable for a four-year-old?
On easy, yes. There is no reading, the touch targets are large, and the shapes on the bubbles mean colour vision is not required.